James Baldwin

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' Baldwin's ground-breaking second novel, which established him as one of the great American writers of his time David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancée to return from vacation in Spain. But when he meets Giovanni, a handsome Italian barman, the two men are drawn into an intense affair. After three months David's fiancée returns and, denying his true nature, he rejects Giovanni for a 'safe' future as a married man. His decision eventually brings tragedy. Filled with passion, regret and longing, this story of a fated love triangle has become a landmark of gay writing. James Baldwin caused outrage as a black author writing about white homosexuals, yet for him the issues of race, sexuality and personal freedom were eternally intertwined. 'Exquisite... a feat of fire-breathing, imaginative daring' Guardian 'Excruciating beauty' San Francisco Chronicle 'Audacious... remarkable... elegant and courageous' Caryl Phillips

Giovanni's Room

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 . . . .

Natalia Melike

'For a woman,' she said, 'I think a man is always a stranger. And there's something awful about being at the mercy of a stranger.'

First published in 1957, this book attempts to tackle the conflict between homosexual and heterosexual love. It tells of David, a young man awakening to his true homosexual nature, through a relationship with a barman named Giovanni, as he awaits his fiancee's arrival from Spain.

lulu

There seemed to be more chatter - in that curiously measured and vehement language, which sometimes reminds me of stiffening egg white and sometimes of stringed instruments but always of the underside and aftermath of passion.

„I don’t see what’s so hard about being a woman. At least, not as long as she’s got a man.“ „That’s just it,“ said she. „Hasn’t it ever struck you that that’s a sort of humiliating necessity?“

She fitted in my arms, she always had, and the shock of holding her caused me to feel that my arms had been empty since she had been away.

„You mean I have a home to go to as long as I don’t go there?“ „You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.“

This was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them.

He made me think of home - perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

[his face] became a stranger’s face - or it made me so guilty to look on him that I wished it were a stranger’s face. Not all my memorising had prepared me for the metamorphosis which my memorising had helped to bring about.

Time is just common, it’s like water for a fish. Everybody’s in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That’s all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn’t care.

Perhaps he is a fool and a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.

nothing is more unbearable once one has it, than freedom.

Sometimes, in the days which are coming--God grant me the grace to live them-- in the glare of the grey morning, sour-mouthed, eyelids raw and red, hair tangled and damp from stormy sleep, facing, over coffee and cigarette smoke, last night's impenetrable, meaningless boy who will shortly rise and vanish like the smoke, I will see Giovanni again, as he was that night, so vivid, so winning, all of the light of that gloomy tunnel trapped around his head.

And at moments like this I felt that we were merely enduring and committing the longer and lesser and more perpetual murder.

Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford

Perhaps he is a fool and a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both

And yet - when one begins to search for the crucial, the definitive moment, the moment which changed all others, one finds one-self pressing, in great pain, through a maze of false signals and abruptly locking doors

ryan

I look at my sex, my troubling sex, and wonder how it can be redeemed, how I can save it from the knife.

"what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for?"

"You are how old? Twenty-six or seven? l am nearly twice that and, let me tell you, you are lucky. You are lucky that what is happening to you now is happening 

 and not when you are forty, or something like that, when there would be no hope for you and would simply be destroyed."

Helen 

I SCARCELY KNOW HOW to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni's room. I did not really stay there very long we mer before the spring began and I left there during the summerbut it still seems to me that I spent a lifetime there. Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I Say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea change there.

I SCARCELY KNOW How to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni's room. I did not really stay there very long we met before the spring began and I left there during the summerbut it still seems to me that I spent a lifetime there. Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea change there.

 And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. And, watching his face, I realized that it meant much to me that I could make his face so bright. I saw that I might be willing to give a great deal not to lose that power.  

Ivana Varesko

‘Take off your shoes. Take off your socks. Look at my books - I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.’ 

we really can shackle ourselves away from freedom. we make it seem so foreign and unattainable that it begins to feel impossible. we trick ourselves into feeling it’s out of reach when we forget that it resides within us. 

there is always agency in love. you only do yourself and your lovers a disservice in telling yourself otherwise. 

first james baldwin book, very very lovely

zolasola

we really can shackle ourselves away from freedom. we make it seem so foreign and unattainable that it begins to feel impossible. we trick ourselves into feeling it’s out of reach when we forget that it resides within us. 

there is always agency in love. you only do yourself and your lovers a disservice in telling yourself otherwise. 

first james baldwin book, very very lovely

i hate this book and how it dredges up the horrible feelings i have about stuff in my life 

rachel

absolutely beautiful ... baldwin's writing style balances lyricism with clarity so well

the writing of baldwin is remarkable, i found myself rereading sentences just cause they were so beautifully written…the message i take from this book is that communication is key but david also just didn’t understand himself which made everything more complicated but that’s just part of being a human being of course, we are complicated beings! nonetheless hella & giovanni truly deserved better

micki

A book full of conflict from front to the end. If only they could decide what they wanted and to stick with it.

Edward

So far, on emotional depth, it’s very poetic. I’m drawn so much that we, too, feel the shame of not wanting to give in into the identity and the weight of his self-deceptive thoughts (which has succeeded to broke me). It was clear that David had the fear to love. He used Hella to shield his shame, to feed his own lies that he build clearly to protect himself so he didn’t feel disgusted with the ‘crime’ he did.

And Hella, I really need to address things about her first and how I love her. ‘But if women are supposed to be led by men and there aren't any men to lead them, what happens then? What happens then?’ Because, really, what happens if these ‘gender roles’ fail to run?

She has only judged David and has the right to be so mad after being used by David could fool himself that he’s at peace. To only realize, is this what it led to? That both suffers from all of these patriarchal systemic traditional gender roles.

To be frank, I didn’t really feel the emotional connection throughout their relationship (likely because of the book’s brevity, which is under 200 pages) limits the development in between, and it’s completely understandable. Despite that, the eloquent prose compensates. And it irks me bad when I read Giovanni's misogynistic remarks, what a disappointment because he was such a loveable guy.

David has always been saying to Hella that he need to get out of Paris, anywhere, except Paris. The title ‘Giovanni’s Room’ was the room that David despise, but he secretly wants. The cage where, in his mind, he could do his crime but it removes his ‘purity’.

It kills him with how all of his masks he wears to live were removed. For Giovanni, the room is his savior to taste love (where he begged for it), but for David it’s the room where his innerself concflicts, because the room admits he’s not what he was, that he cannot lie there.

Lilianne

So far, on emotional depth, it’s very poetic. I’m drawn so much that we, too, feel the shame of not wanting to give in into the identity and the weight of his self-deceptive thoughts (which has succeeded to broke me). It was clear that David had the fear to love. He used Hella to shield his shame, to feed his own lies that he build clearly to protect himself so he didn’t feel disgusted with the ‘crime’ he did.

And Hella, I really need to address things about her first and how I love her. ‘But if women are supposed to be led by men and there aren't any men to lead them, what happens then? What happens then?’ Because, really, what happens if these ‘gender roles’ fail to run?

She has only judged David and has the right to be so mad after being used by David could fool himself that he’s at peace. To only realize, is this what it led to? That both suffers from all of these patriarchal systemic traditional gender roles.

To be frank, I didn’t really feel the emotional connection throughout their relationship (likely because of the book’s brevity, which is under 200 pages) limits the development in between, and it’s completely understandable. Despite that, the eloquent prose compensates. And it irks me bad when I read Giovanni's misogynistic remarks, what a disappointment because he was such a loveable guy.

David has always been saying to Hella that he need to get out of Paris, anywhere, except Paris. The title ‘Giovanni’s Room’ was the room that David despise, but he secretly wants. The cage where, in his mind, he could do his crime but it removes his ‘purity’.

It kills him with how all of his masks he wears to live were removed. For Giovanni, the room is his savior to taste love (where he begged for it), but for David it’s the room where his innerself concflicts, because the room admits he’s not what he was, that he cannot lie there.


deeply painful and gorgeous. to Want! to live ,, even to a bloodier death

petrina

This is a very tragic tale of a closeted man trying to navigate the world as a queer man in the 50s. I wanted to like this more than I did, but it’s very hard for me to take my 2025 lenses off and pretend I am a product of more ignorant times. The book’s prose was gorgeous, and this is one of the most easily digestible classics I’ve read thus far. However, I cannot overlook the rampant misogyny and transphobia.

The only character I enjoy is Hella. JUSTICE FOR HER. I think the internalized homophobia had its place and is not a part of my criticism. I believe the depiction of it to be very well done, but the other stuff seemed superfluous and unnecessary. For instance, there was this section that was just making fun of women but added no value to the story for me. It was just misogyny for misogyny sake.

It’s up to the reader to discern if the problematic characterization of the women, the trans community, and older gay community is just David’s view of the world, or if it’s Baldwin’s beliefs bleeding into the pages. My assumption is that it’s Baldwin being a product of his time. For instance, older gay men are written as sleazy, despicable men. As a 2025 reader, I’m allowed to look at this however I see fit. The problematic aspects of this made me very uncomfortable, though I understand the overall point and perspective of this novel.

It is refreshing to see such an unabashedly queer book that doesn’t rely on reading between the lines or reader interpretation. I just wish the characters were more sympathetic and likable and that it was written with more care to other marginalized identities. I can see why this is a favorite classic, though.

Nik ✨

This is a very tragic tale of a closeted man trying to navigate the world as a queer man in the 50s. I wanted to like this more than I did, but it’s very hard for me to take my 2025 lenses off and pretend I am a product of more ignorant times. The book’s prose was gorgeous, and this is one of the most easily digestible classics I’ve read thus far. However, I cannot overlook the rampant misogyny and transphobia.

The only character I enjoy is Hella. JUSTICE FOR HER. I think the internalized homophobia had its place and is not a part of my criticism. I believe the depiction of it to be very well done, but the other stuff seemed superfluous and unnecessary. For instance, there was this section that was just making fun of women but added no value to the story for me. It was just misogyny for misogyny sake.

It’s up to the reader to discern if the problematic characterization of the women, the trans community, and older gay community is just David’s view of the world, or if it’s Baldwin’s beliefs bleeding into the pages. My assumption is that it’s Baldwin being a product of his time. For instance, older gay men are written as sleazy, despicable men. As a 2025 reader, I’m allowed to look at this however I see fit. The problematic aspects of this made me very uncomfortable, though I understand the overall point and perspective of this novel.

It is refreshing to see such an unabashedly queer book that doesn’t rely on reading between the lines or reader interpretation. I just wish the characters were more sympathetic and likable and that it was written with more care to other marginalized identities. I can see why this is a favorite classic, though.

idk man the rife mysoginy made it so hard to care about giovanni? and im just unsure if we were supposed to or not. I understand David’s character but what was the point in Giovanni feeling that way? Felt weird. 

But, beautifully written and david’s character was so well done, bc I think we got his internal battle and we were supposed to see his bad actions and also why he felt that way, but idk about Giovanni like bro am I supposed to care about this dude? 

Laura Layden

idk man the rife mysoginy made it so hard to care about giovanni? and im just unsure if we were supposed to or not. I understand David’s character but what was the point in Giovanni feeling that way? Felt weird. 

But, beautifully written and david’s character was so well done, bc I think we got his internal battle and we were supposed to see his bad actions and also why he felt that way, but idk about Giovanni like bro am I supposed to care about this dude? 

A beautiful—tragic—book, also my first James Baldwin! Finished in 2 days. I knew immediately that I loved his prose; you sense all throughout the narrative as though David is still in flight from himself, grappling indefinitely with this story, this part of him, recounting and making sense of it, at the same time, resisting sense. I'm so in awe of how Baldwin accomplishes so much in so little time. In a quick 170-page run, it is a serious exploration of the human condition.

karalea

 is a masterful exploration of cultural differences, personal identity, and the moral dilemmas that define humanity. Through vivid descriptions and intricate storytelling, Baldwin invites readers to question the internal and external factors that drive human behavior, especially in the face of struggles with morality and sexuality.

One of the book’s standout elements is Baldwin’s ability to bring settings to life. His evocative depictions of Paris, both enchanting and oppressive, frame an intense discussion on the fragile dynamics of tourism and the privilege it entails. Beyond its vivid landscapes, the story’s real power lies in its characters. Baldwin’s nuanced portrayals create a bizarre yet profound connection, forcing readers to confront the complexities of their relationships.

The story also delves deeply into societal injustices, particularly the media's and elite class’s exploitation of youth. This theme, though subtle, is a potent undercurrent that adds depth to what might initially seem like a simple love story.

 is far more than a tale of romance; it’s a poignant commentary on identity, society, and the human condition. Highly recommended for those seeking a book that challenges and captivates in equal measure.

Anugerah

James Baldwin's Giovanni’s Room is a masterful exploration of cultural differences, personal identity, and the moral dilemmas that define humanity. Through vivid descriptions and intricate storytelling, Baldwin invites readers to question the internal and external factors that drive human behavior, especially in the face of struggles with morality and sexuality.

One of the book’s standout elements is Baldwin’s ability to bring settings to life. His evocative depictions of Paris, both enchanting and oppressive, frame an intense discussion on the fragile dynamics of tourism and the privilege it entails. Beyond its vivid landscapes, the story’s real power lies in its characters. Baldwin’s nuanced portrayals create a bizarre yet profound connection, forcing readers to confront the complexities of their relationships.

The story also delves deeply into societal injustices, particularly the media's and elite class’s exploitation of youth. This theme, though subtle, is a potent undercurrent that adds depth to what might initially seem like a simple love story.

Giovanni’s Room is far more than a tale of romance; it’s a poignant commentary on identity, society, and the human condition. Highly recommended for those seeking a book that challenges and captivates in equal measure.

what a beautiful yet tragic story. its actually a short book, but it takes me quite a long time to finish bcs i need more time to process. my rating might change as the time goes by, but overall 4 stars! baldwin’s writing delivered the emotions well.

almeera

yaya

one’s greatest punishment is being oneself. 

nica

While his family struggles with guilt, bitterness, and spiritual issues, John Grimes experiences a religious conversion in the Temple of the Fire Baptised.

Go Tell it on the Mountain

Kavitha Ramachandran 

Don't like the homophobia and subtle racism.

Susan

devastatingly beautiful, lines made me throw the book across the room

sukan

a devastating story of a soul laid bare in the way that an animal bares its teeth

Charlotte Hedges

« perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both. »

what a gut punch. what a book. i have no words i think for the amount of emotions i have felt in such a short time, 150 pages seems short but my goodness what a story. what a writer. this book truly pulls you in immediately but this is not something that can be put into words, you really have to read and experience it in order to understand just how deep and heavy this is. 

what a tragic read that i will carry with me forever. thank you to everyone who has ever recommended this to me and to my best friend who gifted me this book on my birthday.

florine

« perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both. »

what a gut punch. what a book. i have no words i think for the amount of emotions i have felt in such a short time, 150 pages seems short but my goodness what a story. what a writer. this book truly pulls you in immediately but this is not something that can be put into words, you really have to read and experience it in order to understand just how deep and heavy this is. 

what a tragic read that i will carry with me forever. thank you to everyone who has ever recommended this to me and to my best friend who gifted me this book on my birthday.

Definition of gut wrenching. So insanely beautiful but reading it made me feel sick. All-encompassing.

“Americans should never come to Europe,” she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, “it means they never can be happy again” 

Annie Millman

Definition of gut wrenching. So insanely beautiful but reading it made me feel sick. All-encompassing.

“Americans should never come to Europe,” she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, “it means they never can be happy again” 

Devastating. Incredible to read out loud and sink your teeth into.

Giovanni's Room

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