James Baldwin's groundbreaking novel with a new introduction.
Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni. With sharp, probing insight, James Baldwin's classic narrative delves into the mystery of love and tells a deeply moving story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
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"This is an amazing book written by a literary genius. Dan Butler captured the intense emotions of the characters in this reading. "
— Maureen (5 out of 5 stars)
If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one.
— Michael OndaatjeA young American involved with both a woman and a man...Baldwin writes of these matters with unusual candor and yet with such dignity and intensity.
— The New York TimesAbsorbing...[with] immediate emotional impact.
— The Washington PostMr. Baldwin has taken a very special theme and treated it with great artistry and restraint.
— Saturday ReviewExciting...a book that belongs in the top rank of fiction.
— The AtlanticViolent, excruciating beauty.
— San Francisco ChronicleBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
James Baldwin (1924–1987), acclaimed New York Times bestselling author, was educated in New York. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, received excellent reviews and was immediately recognized as establishing a profound and permanent new voice in American letters. The appearance of The Fire Next Time in 1963, just as the civil rights movement was exploding across the American South, galvanized the nation and continues to reverberate as perhaps the most prophetic and defining statement ever written of the continuing costs of Americans’ refusal to face their own history. It became a national bestseller, and Baldwin was featured on the cover of Time. The next year, he was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and collaborated with the photographer Richard Avedon on Nothing Personal, a series of portraits of America intended as a eulogy for the slain Medger Evers. His other collaborations include A Rap on Race with Margaret Mead and A Dialogue with the poet–activist Nikki Giovanni. He also adapted Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X into One Day When I Was Lost. He was made a commander of the French Legion of Honor a year before his death, one honor among many he achieved in his life.
Kevin Young is the author of a books nonfiction and several books of poetry, including Blue Laws, which was long-listed for the National Book Award. He is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.