Giovanni's Room

Description

Considered an 'audacious' second novel, GIOVANNI'S ROOM is set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence. This now-classic story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity.

Born in Harlem in 1924, Baldwin had an early career as a teenage preacher. He lived in Paris from 1948-1956 and his first novels, the autobiographical GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN and GIOVANNI'S ROOM established him as a promising novelist and anticipated some of the themes of his later works, such as racism and sexuality. He became a prominent spokesperson for racial equality, especially during the civil rights movement. He lived in France during his last years. Baldwin died in 1987.

If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one -- Michael Ondaatje Baldwin writes of these matters with unusual candour and yet with such dignity and intensity * The New York Times * Audacious... remarkable... elegant and courageous -- Caryl Phillips Baldwin, in this novel, made clear that he could work wonders with the light and shade of intimacy -- Colm Toibin * The New Yorker * Startling... This is Mr. Baldwin's subject, the rareness and difficulty of love -- Granville Hicks