The Wrong Man Book download in PDF, ePub & Mobi
by Nella Larsen
Fiction Identity Race Gender Class Passing
The Wrong Man is a short story by Nella Larsen, a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance.
At a glittering society party, a contented wife suddenly recognizes a figure from her past. Convinced he can expose a secret she has never shared, she is swept into a current of secrecy, fear, and social performance as she scrambles to protect her marriage and standing.
Threading through crowded rooms and quickening conversations, she engineers a private encounter to bargain for silence. The scene tightens into a poised confrontation—until a final turn reveals a case of mistaken identity, casting her frantic calculations in a startling new light.
Larsen’s compact prose and ironic control transform a single night into a study of reputation and self-fashioning, the anxieties of respectability, and how easily desire and memory can mislead us. The result is a taut, stylish tale with an ironic ending that lingers long after the party ends.
"The room blazed with color. It seemed that the gorgeous things which the women were wearing had for this once managed to subdue the strident tones of the inevitable black and white of the men’s costumes. Tonight they lent just enough of preciseness to add interest to the riotously hued scene."
#118 in Short Stories (this month)
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Copyright info
The Wrong Man by Nella Larsen is believed to be in the public domain in the United States only. It may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you are not in the United States, please check your local laws to ensure this eBook is in the public domain in your country before downloading The Wrong Man in PDF or ePub.
WHY READ THE WRONG MAN IN 2025?
99 years later, still timelyLarsen condenses danger, misrecognition, and moral weather into a taut episode that lingers like a bruise. The surface is simple; the subtext is not. Passing, rumor, and fear spool into choices that feel both inevitable and impossible. The prose is spare and loaded, every glance and silence charged with history. It is a brief encounter with consequences, written by a novelist who knew how social vision can distort a life in seconds.
The story speaks to algorithmic misidentification, surveillance, and the costs of being readable in public. For conversations on race, safety, and code-switching, it offers language and angles that still cut, and a humane insistence on context before judgment.
Ethics under pressure
Right and safe are not synonyms.
Gaze and identity
Who sees you decides your risk.
Compact empathy
Short form, long afterglow.
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About Nella Larsen
Harlem Renaissance stylist probing passing, desire, and respectability with cool precision and quiet menace.
We have 5 books by Nella Larsen in the AliceAndBooks library
