Books by James Baldwin

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Book SynopsisNovelist, essayist, and public intellectual - James Baldwin is widely regarded asone of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. This Everyman''s Librarycollection includes his bestselling, galvanizing essay The Fire NextTimewhich gave voice to the emerging civil rights movement of the 1960sand still lights the way to understanding race in America todayalong withthree additional brilliant works of nonfiction by this seminal chronicler andanalyst of culture. From No Name In the Street''s extraordinary history of theturbulent sixties and early seventies to the passionate, probing, controversial(The Atlantic) Nobody Knows My Name and the incisive criticism of Americanmovies in The Devil Finds Work, Baldwin''s stunning prose over and over provesrelevant to our contemporary struggle for equality, justice, and social change.

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Book Synopsis'Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came.'Originally published in 1953, Go Tell it on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual and moral struggle towards self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understood themselves.Trade ReviewSomething in his prose hit me, almost winding me with its intensity. I'd never read a novel that described loneliness and desire with such burning eloquence. -- Douglas Field * Guardian *It broke my heart and made me want to jump up and down, unable to fully articulate my own response towards it ... [A] notion of a shared humanity consumed Baldwin, and infused everything he did and wrote. Deprived of heritage and history, he borrowed freely and created his own unique language, with the cadences of the Bible and of jazz and Negro spirituals, and inflections of James, Dickens and Shakespeare ... This should, like J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, have been crowned as the Great American Novel. -- Azar Nafisi * Independent *A distinctive book, both realistic and brutal ... A novel of extraordinary poetry. * Chicago Tribune *

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Book Synopsis''Sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle ... all presented in searing, brilliant prose'' The New York Times Book Review We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nationJames Baldwin''s impassioned plea to ''end the racial nightmare'' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963, galvanising a nation and giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement. Told in the form of two intensely personal ''letters'', The Fire Next Time is at once a powerful evocation of Baldwin''s early life in Harlem and an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice.''A seminal meditation on race by one of our greatest writers'' Barack Obama''Baldwin writes with great passion ... it reeks of truth, as the ghettoes of New York and London, Chicago and Manchester reek of our hypocrisy'' Sunday Times''The great poet-prophet of the civil rights movement ... his seminal work'' GuardianTrade ReviewRiveting . . . part of Baldwin's enduring power is that he was not a political thinker. He was interested in the soul's dark spaces much more than in the body politic. -- Colm Toibin * Telegraph *The great poet-prophet of the civil rights movement ... his seminal work * Guardian *Sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle . . . all presented in searing, brilliant prose * The New York Times Book Review *Baldwin writes with great passion ... it reeks of truth, as the ghettoes of New York and London, Chicago and Manchester reek of our hypocrisy * Sunday Times *A true prophet . . . his thought and its utterance are nothing less than majestical -- Mario Puzo * The New York Times *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewLets James Baldwin's searing work soar . . . you will be astounded by the brilliance of his polemic -- Geoffrey Macnab * Independent *A striking work of storytelling . . . One of the best movies about the civil rights era ever made . . . This might be the only movie about race relations that adequately explains with sympathy the root causes * Guardian *Thrilling. . . . A portrait of one man's confrontation with a country that, murder by murder, as he once put it, devastated my universe * New York Times *Baldwin's voice speaks even more powerfully today . . . the prose-poet of our injustice and inhumanity . . . The times have caught up with his scalding eloquence * Variety *I Am Not Your Negro turns James Baldwin into a prophet * Rolling Stone *

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Book Synopsis''These essays ... live and grow in the mind'' James Campbell, IndependentBeing a writer, says James Baldwin in this searing collection of essays, requires ''every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are''. His seminal 1961 follow-up to Notes on a Native Son shows him responding to his times and exploring his role as an artist with biting precision and emotional power: from polemical pieces on racial segregation and a journey to ''the Old Country'' of the Southern states, to reflections on figures such as Ingmar Bergman and André Gide, and on the first great conference of African writers and artists in Paris.''Brilliant...accomplished...strong...vivid...honest...masterly'' The New York Times''A bright and alive book, full of grief, love and anger'' Chicago Tribune

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Book SynopsisA deluxe hardcover edition of one of James Baldwin?s most admired works, exploring what it means to be Black in America and his own search for identityPart of the Beacon Classics series Originally published in 1955, James Baldwin''s timeless and moving essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad inaugurated him as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the 20th century. Through a mix of autobiographical and analytical essays, Baldwin delivers honest and raw revelations about what it means to be Black in America, specifically pre-Civil Rights Movement, and how, he himself, came to understand the nation.Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many Black expatriates of the time, from his home in ?The Harlem Ghetto? to a sobering ?Journey to Atlanta.? He was one of the few writing on race at the time who addressed the issue with a powerful mixture of outrage at the gross physical and political violence against Black citizens and measured understanding of their oppressors, which helped awaken a white audience to the injustices under their noses.For fans of Baldwin''s well-known works or those new to Baldwin altogether, this celebrated essay collection showcases his extraordinary writing, revolutionary analyses, and prophetic insight into American culture and politics.

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Book SynopsisIn this tender, impassioned fourth novel, James Baldwin created one of his most striking characters: a man struggling to become himself.''Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it''At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, we see the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo''s childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the world of the theatre lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that seems poised on the brink of racial war. In this tender, angry 1968 novel, James Baldwin created one of his most striking characters: a man struggling to become himself.''The emotion surrounding family attachment... is deeply felt and is one reasons he continues to be read with such intensity'' Colm TóibínTrade ReviewTruth-telling, witness bearing, soul stirring writing -- Cornel WestThe emotion surrounding family attachment... is deeply felt and is one of the reasons he continues to be read with such intensity -- Colm TóibínTimeless . . . a visionary writer * Guardian *A jazzlike reconfiguration of Baldwin's own life, with existing parts examined and rearranged and new parts added -- Clifford Thompson * LA Review of Books *One of the few essential novelists of our time * New Statesman *

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1963, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time stabbed at the heart of America's so-called Negro problem. As remarkable for its masterful prose as for its frank and personal account of the black experience in the United States, it is considered one of the most passionate and influential explorations of 1960s race relations, weaving thematic threads of love, faith, and family into a candid assault on the hypocrisy of the land of the free. Now, James Baldwin's rich, raw, and ever relevant prose is reprinted with more than 100 photographs from Steve Schapiro, who traveled the American South with Baldwin for Life magazine. The encounter thrust Schapiro into the thick of the movement, allowing for vital, often iconic, images both of civil rights leadersincluding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Jerome Smith

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Book Synopsis'Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth’s witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my nostrils...'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 an impassioned, deeply moving story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.Trade ReviewAudacious ... remarkable ... elegant and courageous -- Caryl PhillipsA powerful book because of the stark simplicity of its drama and the intensity of its vision -- Colm TóibínExquisite ... a feat of fire-breathing, imaginative daring * Guardian *

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Book Synopsis''This is the work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers'' Edmund White, Washington Post When Arthur Montana, world-renowned ''Emperor of Soul'', is found dead in a London pub, his grief-stricken brother looks back over thirty years in the lives of their group of friends: from their childhood spent preaching and singing in Harlem churches, to their struggles with war and poverty, and their encounters with wealth, love and fame. Set against a vividly drawn background of the civil rights movement of the sixties, Baldwin''s last novel is a monumental saga that ranges from New York to Paris, Korea to Africa to portray how profoundly racial politics can shape life, especially in the private business of love. ''Warm, melancholy . . . Hall Montana''s voice is the conduit for Baldwin''s most distinctive quality as a writer, his abundant tenderness'' The New York TimesTrade ReviewThe best of his work ... stands comparison with any of its period to come out of the United States * The Times *This is the work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers -- Edmund White * Washington Post *If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one -- Michael OndaatjeBaldwin is one of the few genuinely indispensable American writers * Saturday Review *

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Book SynopsisJames E. Baldwin examines how the interplay of these two conceptions of Islamic law religious scholarship and royal justice undergirded legal practice in Cairo, the largest and richest city in the Ottoman provinces.

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Book Synopsis''Achingly beautiful'' Guardian Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin''s novel is Tish nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice for Fonny. To this love story James Baldwin brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.''If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family'' Joyce Carol OatesThe inspiration for Oscar award-winning film Trade ReviewIf Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family -- Joyce Carol OatesSoulful . . . Racial injustice may flatten "the black experience" into one single, fearful, constantly undermined way of life-but black life, black love, is so much larger than that . . . It's one of the signature lessons of Baldwin's work that blackness contains multitudes * Vanity Fair *Truth-telling, witness bearing, soul stirring writing -- Cornel WestThe spirit of Jimmy's work is of a high moral prophetic vision -- Amriri BarakaOne of the few essential novelists of our time * New Statesman *

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Book Synopsis''So the club rose, the blood came down, and his bitterness and his anguish and his guilt were compounded''Drawing on Baldwin''s own experiences of prejudice in an America violently divided by race, these searing essays - Dark Days, The Price of the Ticket and The White Man''s Guilt - blend the intensely personal with the political to envisage a better world.Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York''s underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

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Book SynopsisJames Baldwin''s electrifying first novel.''I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.''Drawing on James Baldwin''s own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if ''the Holy Ghost were riding on the air''. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind. ''His prose hit me, almost winding me with its intensity. I''d never read a novel that described loneliness and desire with such burning eloquence'' Douglas Field, Guardian''A beautiful, enduring, spirtual song of a novel'' Andrew O''HaganTrade ReviewIt broke my heart and made me want to jump up and down... It captures an essential aspect of life in America, its contradictions and seductions, that bittersweet mix of love and hate that so many feel towards the country -- Azar Nafisi * Independent *His prose hit me, almost winding me with its intensity. I'd never read a novel that described loneliness and desire with such burning eloquence -- Douglas Field * Guardian *Vivid imagery, with lavish attention to details * The New York Times *A beautiful, enduring, spiritual song of a novel -- Andrew O'HaganOne of the few essential novelists of our time * New Statesman *

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Book Synopsis''A masterwork... an almost unbearable, tumultuous, blood-pounding experience'' Washinton PostWhen Another Country appeared in 1962, it caused a literary sensation. James Baldwin''s masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit.''In Another Country, Baldwin created the essential American drama of the century'' Colm TóibínTrade ReviewA masterwork... an almost unbearable, tumultuous, blood-pounding experience * Washington Post *Baldwin is one of the few genuinely indispensable American writers * Saturday Review *A delicate and fine-tuned talent... The book reveals Baldwin's immense will and professionalism * The New Yorker *Let our novelists read Mr Baldwin and tremble. There is a whirlwind loose in the land * Sunday Times *In Another Country, Baldwin created the essential American drama of the century -- Colm Tóibín

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Book SynopsisBorn in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, social critic, and the author of more than twenty books. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay collection The Fire Next Time was a bestseller that made him an influential figure in the civil rights movement. Baldwin spent many years in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in 1987.

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA straight-from-the-shoulder writer, writing about the troubled problems of this troubled earth with an illuminating intensity that should influence for the better all who ponder on the things books say -- Langston Hughes * The New York Times *Powerful . . . I wish I could press this book into the hands of every American - actually, every human. -- Celeste Ng * Guardian *Edgy and provocative . . . entertainingly satirical -- Robert McCrum * Guardian *A classic . . . Take the words out of the 1950s, when they were published, and they could apply to the women in pink hats, the scientists, the Black Lives Matter activists, the climate-change believers and the LGBTQ-rights supporters who have flooded the streets of Washington this year * Washington Post *A classic ... In a divided America, James Baldwin's fiery critiques reverberate anew * Washington Post *Cemented his reputation as a cultural seer ... Notes of a Native Son endures as his defining work, and his greatest * Time *

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Book SynopsisWhen David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's life descends into tragedy. United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love's endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love...

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Book Synopsis''Candid, insightful, moving . . . a memoir, a chronicle of and commentary on America''s abortive civil-rights movement'' -The New York TimesIn this deeply personal book, Baldwin reflects on the experiences that shaped him as a writer and activist: from his childhood in Harlem to the deaths Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Exploring the visceral reality of life in the American South as well as Baldwin's impressions of London, Paris and Hamburg, No Name in the Street grapples with the failed promises of global liberation movements in fearless, candid prose. Timeless, tender and profound, Baldwin's searing narrative contains the multiplicities of what it means to be Black in America and, indeed, around the world.

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Book SynopsisFrom one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century comes a groundbreaking novel set among the bohemian bars and nightclubs of 1950s Paris, about love and the fear of love—“a book that belongs in the top rank of fiction” (The Atlantic).One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 YearsIn the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. David is a young American expatriate who has just proposed marriage to his girlfriend, Hella. While she is away on a trip, David meets a bartender named Giovanni to whom he is drawn in spite of himself. Soon the two are spending the night in Giovanni’s curtainless room, which he keeps dark to protect their privacy. But Hella’s return to Paris brings the affair to a crisis, one that rapidly spirals into tragedy.David struggles for self-knowledge during one long, dark night—“the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.” With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a deeply moving story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.

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Book SynopsisSet among the bohemian bars and nightclubs of 1950s Paris, this groundbreaking novel about love and the fear of love is a book that belongs in the top rank of fiction (The Atlantic). • Presented here in stunning hardcover and with an Introduction by Colm Tóibín, New York Times bestselling author of The Master.David is a young American expatriate who has just proposed marriage to his girlfriend, Hella. While she is away on a trip, David meets a bartender named Giovanni to whom he is drawn in spite of himself. Soon the two are spending the night in Giovanni’s curtainless room, which he keeps dark to protect their privacy. But Hella’s return to Paris brings the affair to a crisis, one that rapidly spirals into tragedy.Caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality, David struggles for self-knowledge during one long, dark night—“the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.” With sharp, probing insight, Giovanni's Room tells an impassioned, deeply moving story that lays bare the unspoken complexities of the human heart. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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