Urban Romance

A critically acclaimed journalist and screenwriter and the author of eight books, Nelson George is widely praised for his realistic portrayal of today's fast-changing African-American culture. "George is the leading critic of African-American popular culture of his generation," said Cornel West of George's Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Bohos, and The New York Times Book Review hails his writing as "thoughtful and witty." Now, Nelson George brings together his abundant talents. As observer and storyteller in his eagerly awaited first novel. Urban Romance. Set amid the racial tension and moral confusion of New York City in the early eighties. Urban Romance brilliantly explores themes of African-American class struggle, cutthroat "black city politics," and the spread of urban culture. Dwayne Robinson, an acerbic music critic from the tough working-class streets of Brooklyn, is more ambitious than he is successful and more lustful than he is wise. Chasing women is his hobby until he encounters Danielle Embry, a sophisticated, suburban-born book editor who believes in love and work in equal portions. Though both are African-American, the connections and differences between them have as much to do with personality as with race. For Dwayne, love is elusive and sex something you can get your hands on. For Danielle, love is easy - maybe a bit too easy - but if a man abuses love she'll cut him off cold. It is their. Mutual attraction and philosophical clashes that give this big-city love story its energy and bite. In the tradition of Waiting to Exhale, Nelson George spins a provocative tale that examines male-female relationships and sexual mores with uninhibited freshness and originality.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Romance, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.