Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

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.

Considered an 'audacious' second novel, Giovanni’s Room is set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence. This now-classic story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity.

One of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, James Baldwin’s novels primarily address issues of race, class and sexual inequality, including Giovanni’s Room which was extremely controversial in its representation of gay relationships. His other novels include Go Tell it on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son and Another Country.