It's New Years Day in 1933 in New York City and Max Disher, a young black man, has just found out that a certain Dr Junius Crookman has discovered a mysterious process that allows people to bleach their skin white - a new way to 'solve the American race problem'. Max, who is tired of being rejected by women because of his dark skin, leaps at the opportunity. After a brief stay at the Crookman Sanitarium, where he receives the Black-No-More procedure, he becomes Matthew Fisher, a white man who is able to attain everything he has ever wanted: money, power, a beautiful wife and good liquor. But as America becomes whiter and whiter, it gets more and more dangerous.

What would happen if Marcus Garvey had achieved his dreams by force? Satirizing one of the most influential figures of twentieth century Black America, George S. Schuyler's Black Empire is a remarkable look into the complicated politics of race and class. After witnessing a murder in Harlem, the promising young Black journalist, Carl Slater, is kidnapped by the incredibly charismatic but deranged Dr. Belsidus. Having secretly formed a Black Internationale, the doctor has plans to upset alliances between Europe and the United States when the time is right. As Carl slowly discovers the depth of the doctor's insanity and witnesses the fallout from the ensuing revolution, he watches as the dream of an Africa for Africans is fully realized but questions the cost.Professionally typeset with a beautifully designed cover, this edition of Black Empire reimagines a classic of satire and Black speculative fiction for the modern reader.

George S. Schuyler's Afrofuturistic novel Black No More, originally published in 1931, imagines a world where Black Americans have the chance to cross the color line and become white. What would happen if science gave Black Americans the choice to become white? Mirroring The Blacker the Berry, by Wallace Thurman, George S. Schuyler's Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, AD 1933-1940, is one of the first Afrofuturistic novels ever published. On New Year's Eve, Max Disher's romantic advances are rejected on the basis that he is a Black man. Come New Year's Day, the answer to his frustration appears in the form of an announcement about a new scientific procedure called "Black-No-More." Believing that his life will have much more fortune in white skin, he goes through with the treatment-changing his name to "Matthew Fisher." The newly-made white Max has to decide what it means to live and breathe on the other side of the color line. Professionally typeset with a beautifully designed cover, this edition of Black No More is a reimagining of a Harlem Renaissance staple for the modern reader.

New to Penguin Classics, a pioneering work of Afrofuturism and antiracist fiction by the author of Black No More Black Empire tells the electrifying tale of Dr. Henry Belsidus, a Black scientific genius desperate to free his people from the crushing tyranny of racism. To do so, he concocts a plot to enlist a crew of Black intellectuals to help him take over the world, cultivating a global network to reclaim Africa from imperial powers and punish Europe and America for white supremacy and their crimes against the planet's Black population. At once a daring, high-stakes science fiction adventure and a strikingly innovative Afrofuturist classic, this controversial and fearlessly political work lays bare the ethical quandaries of exactly how far one should go in the name of justice.

'A liberating and lacerating critique of American racial madness, capitalism and white superiority ... Schuyler's wild, misanthropic, take-no-prisoners satire of American life seems more relevant than ever ... Afrofuturist before such a term existed' New York Review of Books Telling the extraordinary story of a mysterious process that can turn black skin white in 1930s America, Black No More is a pioneering and caustic work of Black speculative fiction from one of the great Harlem Renaissance authors. 'A clever and biting satire' Isabel Wilkerson, The New York Times Book Review 'No one is safe from Schuyler's biting mockery' The New York Times

Modern Library Harlem Renaissance

What would happen to the race problem in America if black people turned white? Would everybody be happy? These questions and more are answered hilariously in Black No More, George S. Schuyler's satiric romp. Black No More is the story of Max Disher, a dapper black rogue of an insurance man who, through a scientific transformation process, becomes Matthew Fisher, a white man. Matt dreams up a scam that allows him to become the leader of the Knights of Nordica, a white supremacist group, as well as to marry the white woman who rejected him when he was black. Black No More is a hysterical exploration of race and all its self-serving definitions. If you can't beat them, turn into them.
        Ishmael Reed, one of today's top black satirists and the author of Mumbo Jumbo and Japanese by Spring, provides a spirited Introduction.

The fertile artistic period now known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920- 1930) gave birth to many of the world-renowned masters of black literature and is the model for today's renaissance of black writers.