Giovanni's Room

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

A mesmerizing book

Chris Abani, NPR

It has a level of angst and heartbreak I am yet to find anywhere else

Troye Sivan, Vogue

Extraordinarily exact and complex emotional intimacy . . . At the core of the novel lies Baldwin’s recognition that with a denial of suffering and pain as a means of happiness, there can be no feeling, understanding, or real connection in life

Guardian

Startling... This is Mr. Baldwin's subject, the rareness and difficulty of love

Granville Hicks

Baldwin, in this novel, made clear that he could work wonders with the light and shade of intimacy

Colm Tóibín, The New Yorker

Audacious... remarkable... elegant and courageous

Caryl Phillips

Baldwin writes of these matters with unusual candour and yet with such dignity and intensity

The New York Times

If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one

Michael Ondaatje