Giovanni's Room (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
When 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…
About the Author
James Baldwin (1924-1987) was born and educated in New York. Go Tell It on the Mountain, his first novel, was published in 1953. Evoking brilliantly his experiences as a boy preacher in Harlem, it was an immediate success and was followed by Giovanni’s Room, which explores the theme of gay love. His novels are notable for the personal way in which they explore questions of sexual and racial identity.
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First Sentence
I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Not often does one encounter a novel that changes the way one thinks, that touches one deeply with its powerful story and realistic characters. 'Giovanni's Room' is one of these novels. It is written beautifully, like a long-lost tale but the pain in the novel reflects real life and human relationships. The selfishness, uncertainty, fears, love and passion of human beings are portrayed here for the reader to identify with them. The poignant way in which Baldwin describes Giovanni trying to better his 'room' for his ungrateful American lover is breath-taking. This novel is not only about sexuality, it digs deep into rifts of culture and class.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent novel, I could not put it down, in spite of the fact that, knowing that it would all go terribly bad, I was always scared of what could happen. It is a sad story, and yet so true, in the way it portrays a city, a historical period, and the realisation (and denial) of one's homosexuality. Yes, the main character is a coward, and yet Baldwin does not push the reader into hating him. We don't like him, we would not behave like him, still we can understand.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this novel, Baldwin captures the torment faced by a young man in a foreign city with desires he dare not admit to himself. David spends his life running from his sexuality with the result that he denies and destroys his lover Giovanni. Giovanni's chaotic and shambolic room provides a powerful symbolic back drop to the events which unfold within. The novel leaves a bitter taste - you can't run forever and be happy. However this is a message to society and not the individual - David and Giovanni were constrained by an era where homosexuality was synonymous with inferiority and perversion. Within these constraints they could not be happy as a couple.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Heart Wrenching
Frankly this is the most heart wrenching novel I have read in a long, long time. Beautifully constructed, with truly 3 dimensional characters poulating it, it is a story that sucks... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Simon Wood
Intense and honest
I became totally absorbed in the story about David and his failed relationships. Baldwin writes with an intensity, as if his character's thoughts and actions were put to paper in... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Martin
The progress we have made...
James Baldwin was one of America's preeminent authors of the 20th Century. He is most often associated with raising the awareness of Americans, in particular, to the plight of... Read more
Published 7 months ago by John P. Jones III
An extraordinary book...
This book builds to a level of unrelenting emotional intensity: I have never so much as "teared-up" on finishing a novel, but this book reduced me to a quivering baby. Read more
Published 8 months ago by JD
A lovely read.
Giovanni's Room was a very easy read but with some very, very complicated situations and characters. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Cocomoloko
An aching love story in shades of grey, punctuated by brilliant light
'Giovanni's Room' has the aching ring of truth and personal experience, and is written in sentences so beautiful and well-crafted that the novel seems more like poetry than prose. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Aanel Victoria
Gay Paree
This was a book that brought back memories of the sixties and seventies. Baldwin had written a 'black' novel - 'Go Tell it on the Mountain' - and now wrote a gay novel, which as... Read more
Published 22 months ago by charles.nightingale@btinternet.com
Illusion of choice
A short novel about the sometimes painful illusion of choice. The central character, David, an American in Paris, believes he can control his destiny, but his desire to forge this... Read more
Published on 5 Feb 2010 by Robert Cordner
The desire to be loved
This short novella encapsulates the oppressive atmosphere of a city, a culture and of a room - a room in which a damaged desperate man cruelly uses and discards another, in order... Read more
Published on 8 July 2009 by Daniel Park
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
I don't even know where to begin from in reviewing this short little book. Well, maybe a good start would certainly be: read it. Read more
Published on 9 April 2009 by Alessandra F.
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