Books

New York: The Dial Press, 1956. First edition of this landmark novel. Octavo, original half cloth. Boldly signed by James Baldwin on the title page. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a touch a shelfwear. Jacket design by Seymour Chwast. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box made by the Harcourt Bindery. An exceptional example. Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart. “If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one" (Michael Ondaatje).

Giovanni's Room is a 1956 novel by James Baldwin. The book focuses on the events in the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men in his life, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni whom he meets at a Parisian gay bar.