Giovanni´s Room
James Baldwin
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
Baldwin's ground-breaking second novel, which established him as one of the great American writers of his time
'Audacious... remarkable... elegant and courageous' Caryl Phillips
'Exquisite, a feat of fire-breathing, imaginative daring' Guardian
David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancée to return from vacation in Spain. But when he meets Giovanni, a handsome Italian barman, the two men are drawn into an intense affair. After three months David's fiancée returns and, denying his sexuality, he rejects Giovanni for a 'safe' future as a married man — a decision that will bring tragedy, longing and regret.
'Gorgeous, fearless, tempered by dark knowledge and pain ... the greatest American prose stylist of his generation' Colm Tóibín
'A layered exploration of queer desire ... It is electric' Hilton Als
Product Details
About James Baldwin
Reviews for Giovanni´s Room
Guardian
Today, when a great many arguments and complaints from the queer quarters of the political sphere have to do with what has been done to queerness by the patriarchy and by whiteness, Baldwin asks, in Giovanni’s Room, what love looks like, ultimately, when we leave all those bags at the door — and if we can. Do we know how to live in a purely queer world not defined by resistance or self-hatred?’
Hilton Als
New York Times Style Magazine
The whole novel is a kind of anatomy of shame, of its roots and the myths that perpetuate it, of the damage it can do.
Garth Greenwell
Guardian
The simple story of love is filled with ambiguity, difficulty, and paradox
Colm Tóibín
The New Yorker
It has a level of angst and heartbreak I am yet to find anywhere else
Troye Sivan
Vogue
A mesmerizing book
Chris Abani
NPR
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 Tóibín
The New Yorker