Giovanni's Room

What it is about

James Baldwin’s novel follows David, an American in Paris, as he confronts his relationship with Giovanni while trying to preserve a socially acceptable identity. Its compressed tragedy examines desire, shame, masculinity, nationality, self-deception, and the destruction that follows when another person is made to carry what the self refuses to know. I need this book close whenever I start thinking the question has become simple.

Why I keep it

Baldwin in Paris. The room, and what he could not say.

Key ideas

Beside it on the shelf · Literature & Fiction