Home to Harlem

Contributors

By Claude McKay

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Nov 3, 2026
Page Count
192 pages
Publisher
Union Square & Co.
ISBN-13
9781454967576

Price

$10.99

Price

$13.99 CAD

Format

Trade Paperback

Format:

Trade Paperback $10.99 $13.99 CAD

From a key voice of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay’s classic novel about the vibrant but perilous world of Jazz Age Harlem, freshly repackaged for the Union Square & Co. Signature Editions line. 

Back in Harlem after fleeing the horrors of World War I, Jake has left his past behind—only to find himself drawn into the city’s seductive Jazz Age underworld. He navigates the bustling nightclubs and treacherous streets, discovering a society caught between dazzling artistic expression and unrelenting struggle, all while desperately searching for the one person he hopes can truly bring him home.

Originally published in 1928, Home to Harlem is a raw, fearless exploration of identity, race, and class in the midst of the bourgeoning Harlem Renaissance from a “uniquely timeless” writer (Los Angeles Review of Books).

  • “McKay remains, despite being less well known, uniquely timeless. He’s incredibly progressive for his time, especially with regard to queer politics, but what he’s talking about … are things that speak to us viscerally in the present. His fiction grasps how these forces, as possibility and problem, are reshaping the world in ways that other writers from that time don’t quite address.”
    Eric Newman,, Los Angeles Review of Books
  • “What is remarkable about McKay’s fiction is its rejection of sentimentality of any stripe. Unlike some of his peers in the New Negro Renaissance, McKay refuses to make his fiction ‘decorous and decorative’ in order to paint a flattering portrait of black life, opting instead for what he admitted could be a ‘crude realism.’”
    Brent Hayes Edwards,, The New York Times Book Review
  • “McKay (1889–1948) has long been considered one of the great authors of the Harlem Renaissance.”
    Sarah Begley,, TIME

Claude McKay

About the Author

Claude McKay (1890–1948) was a Jamaican American writer and poet who was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote several collections of poetry, novels, short stories, non-fiction, and two autobiographical books, and is best known for his poem “If We Must Die” and his first novel, Home to Harlem.

Learn more about this author