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If Beale Street Could Talk

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780140187977

  • Length: 192  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 14mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 179g

  • RRP: £8.99

If Beale Street Could Talk

The inspiration for the new film from Oscar award-winning director Barry Jenkins

'Achingly beautiful' Guardian

Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin's novel is Tish nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice for Fonny. To this love story James Baldwin brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.

'If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family' Joyce Carol Oates

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780140187977

  • Length: 192  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 14mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 179g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family

    Joyce Carol Oates

  • Soulful . . . Racial injustice may flatten "the black experience" into one single, fearful, constantly undermined way of life-but black life, black love, is so much larger than that . . . It's one of the signature lessons of Baldwin's work that blackness contains multitudes

    Vanity Fair

  • Truth-telling, witness bearing, soul stirring writing

    Cornel West

  • The spirit of Jimmy's work is of a high moral prophetic vision

    Amriri Baraka

  • One of the few essential novelists of our time

    New Statesman

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About the Author

James Baldwin

Born in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, social critic, and the author of more than twenty books. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay collection The Fire Next Time was a bestseller that made him an influential figure in the civil rights movement. Baldwin spent many years in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in 1987.

James Baldwin

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Where to start with James Baldwin

The iconic American author, essayist, poet and playwright turned his life’s struggles into brilliant literary works, as relevant today as when they were written. Here’s a guide to his best books to start with, by the author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today.
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Books they tried to ban

Did you know Little Red Riding Hood was once banned in Germany for being thought to represent the Nazis? Here are 15 books they tried to stop you from reading.
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Extracts

Colm Tóibín on Baldwin’s confessional Giovanni’s Room

James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is a mainstay on lists of LGBTQ classics. In this introduction from the new Everyman edition, Colm Tóibín unravels the intimately confessional style that draws this beautiful book into so many readers’ hearts

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