Giovanni's Room

★The long-awaited James Baldwin masterpiece by Chinese readers ★Selected as one of "The Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years" by The Atlantic Monthly ★BBC "100 English Novels That Shaped the World" ★With a wonderful introduction by Colm Tóibín James Baldwin (1924-1987), a famous American novelist, essayist, poet, playwright and social activist, was born in Harlem, New York. He had a rough childhood. His biological father had drug addiction problems. His later mother married the pastor David Baldwin and gave birth to eight more children. In 1938, under the influence of his strict stepfather, the fourteen-year-old Baldwin became a pastor in Harlem. At the age of seventeen, Baldwin decided to leave the church. In 1948, Baldwin, who was extremely disappointed with the racial reality in the United States, chose to immigrate to France. In 1953, Baldwin published his first autobiographical novel, "Shouting from the Mountain Tops." In the following thirty years, he successively published more than 20 works such as "Notes of a Native Son", "Giorgiovanni's Room", "Another Country", "The Fire Next Time", "Tell Me How Long the Train Goes" and "If Beale Street Can Bear Witness". In 1957, Baldwin returned to the United States and joined the then-raging black liberation movement, becoming an important opinion leader in the American civil rights movement. On December 1, 1987, Baldwin died of stomach cancer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, a city in southern France. "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature" commented on Baldwin - "With beautiful artistry, he pierced the historical barriers in American racial consciousness by combining the most intimate parts of his personal experience with the broadest questions about the fate of the country and the world." David, a young American, is searching for himself in Paris, while his fiancée Hera wanders alone in Spain. David meets an Italian bartender named Giovanni in a bar owned by Guillaume. Giovanni awakens the desire in David's heart, and David enters Giovanni's room, which is cramped, disorderly, and far away from the city. From the beginning of the novel we know that David abandoned Giovanni, that Hera returned to the United States, and that Giovanni was sentenced to death for killing the bar owner. Baldwin moves freely through the timeline, and David oscillates back and forth between man and woman. With his keen and profound imagination, James Baldwin reveals the mystery of love, creates a touching story about death and passion, and reveals the complex and silent emotions in the human heart.