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Reading lists

The ultimate Black History Month reading list

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Quizzes

Quiz: which fictional world do you belong in?

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Features

20 books everyone should read before they’re 20

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‘The future is wide open’: How trans literature came of age

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The best short stories ever written

Where to start with Barack Obama's reading recommendations

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Barack Obama’s recommended reading list

A black and white photo of James Baldwin on a bright blue background, surrounded by the quote, “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose”. 

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12 James Baldwin quotes that are still painfully true today

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Where to start with...

Where to start reading James Baldwin’s books

Ignore a book's dedication at your peril.

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10 of the most intriguing book dedications in fiction

From William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch to Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin, the 1950s were a fascinating time for literature.

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Books that shaped the 1950s

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Books they tried to ban

James Baldwin and Raoul Peck's I Am Not Your Negro wins 2018 BAFTA for Best Documentary 

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News

James Baldwin and Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro wins 2018 BAFTA for Best Documentary

Colm Tóibín on Baldwin’s confessional Giovanni’s Room

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Extracts

Giovanni's Room

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-clothbound-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Banner&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Clothbound_Series_26_06" target="_blank">Buy 3 classics for £33 on the Penguin Shop</a>

A beautiful new Clothbound edition of Baldwin's ground-breaking novel, which established him as one of the great American writers of his time 
 'Audacious... remarkable... elegant and courageous' Caryl Phillips 
 'Exquisite, a feat of fire-breathing, imaginative daring' Guardian 
 
 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 sexuality, he rejects Giovanni for a 'safe' future as a married man — a decision that will bring tragedy, longing and regret. 
 
 'Gorgeous, fearless, tempered by dark knowledge and pain ... the greatest American prose stylist of his generation' Colm Tóibín 
 
 'A layered exploration of queer desire ... It is electric' Hilton Als

Extraordinarily exact and complex emotional intimacy . . . At the core of the novel lies Baldwin’s recognition that with a denial of suffering and pain as a means of happiness, there can be no feeling, understanding, or real connection in life

Today, when a great many arguments and complaints from the queer quarters of the political sphere have to do with what has been done to queerness by the patriarchy and by whiteness, Baldwin asks, in Giovanni&rsquo;s Room, what love looks like, ultimately, when we leave all those bags at the door &mdash; and if we can. Do we know how to live in a purely queer world not defined by resistance or self-hatred?&rsquo;

The whole novel is a kind of anatomy of shame, of its roots and the myths that perpetuate it, of the damage it can do.

The simple story of love is filled with ambiguity, difficulty, and paradox

It has a level of angst and heartbreak I am yet to find anywhere else

James Baldwin was born in 1924 in New York. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), which evokes his experiences as a boy preacher in Harlem, was an immediate success. Baldwin’s second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956) has become a landmark of gay literature and Another Country (1962) caused a literary sensation. His searing essay collections Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961) contain many of the works that made him an influential figure in the Civil Rights Movement. Baldwin published several other collections of non-fiction, including The Fire Next Time (1963) and No Name in the Street (1972). His short stories are collected in Going to Meet the Man (1965). His later works include the novels Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Just Above My Head (1979). 
 
James Baldwin won a number of literary fellowships: a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1986. He died in 1987 in France

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 sexuality, he rejects Giovanni for a 'safe' future as a married man — a decision that will bring tragedy, longing and regret.

No Name in the Street

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

'Candid, insightful, moving . . . a memoir, a chronicle of and commentary on America's abortive civil-rights movement' -The New York Times 
 In this deeply personal book, Baldwin reflects on the experiences that shaped him as a writer and activist: from his childhood in Harlem to the deaths Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Exploring the visceral reality of life in the American South as well as Baldwin’s impressions of London, Paris and Hamburg, No Name in the Street grapples with the failed promises of global liberation movements in fearless, candid prose. 
 Timeless, tender and profound, Baldwin’s searing narrative contains the multiplicities of what it means to be Black in America and, indeed, around the world.

Baldwin’s essayistic reflections are often marked by the personal: he uses anecdotes from his own life to uncover more universal truths . . . the clarity, fire and empathetic humanity of his voice is needed now more than ever

A strikingly personal book… an assessment of where the traumatic events of the late-1960s left Americans, both white and black… Baldwin’s prose style is as striking in No Name in the Street as in many of his other essays… [his] words still burn on the page

There is still pleasure in his inimitable voice. That voice was heard aloud in the debates and interviews he gave which made Baldwin a great example of that extinct species, the public intellectual

It contains truth that cannot be denied

If Van Gogh was our 19th century artist-saint then James Baldwin is our 20th century one

Mesmerizing... as candid, insightful and moving as any in his previous essays... His message is finally as basic as it is undeniable: If we do not love one another, we will destroy one another

Baldwin wrote in arias of feeling and thought… [He] proved that if he wrote it down, it could have power beyond the moment

He was one of our best essayists in the best American gadfly tradition

What makes his essays so compelling is that he insists on being personal, on forcing the public and the political to submit to his voice and the test of his experience and his observation

Baldwin refused to hold anyone’s hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you

James Baldwin was born in 1924 in New York. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), which evokes his experiences as a boy preacher in Harlem, was an immediate success. Baldwin&rsquo;s second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956) has become a landmark of gay literature and Another Country (1962) caused a literary sensation. His searing essay collections Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961) contain many of the works that made him an influential figure in the Civil Rights Movement. Baldwin published several other collections of non-fiction, including The Fire Next Time (1963) and No Name in the Street (1972). His short stories are collected in Going to Meet the Man (1965). His later works include the novels Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Just Above My Head (1979). 
 
James Baldwin won a number of literary fellowships: a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1986. He died in 1987 in France

The Rockpile; The Outing; The Man Child; Previous Condition; Sonny's Blues

Going To Meet The Man

‘Everyone’s life begins on a level where races, armies, and churches stop. And yet everyone’s life is always shaped by races, churches, and armies’ 
 
In these eight extraordinary stories of love, conflict, desperation and fear, James Baldwin shows people trapped by the roles they must play in society, and those who try and escape them. 
 
From the child in ‘The Rockpile’ whose God-fearing father will not forgive his illegitimacy, to the adolescent who hides his sexuality from his community in ‘The Outing’, and from the down-and-out jazz pianist recovering from addiction in ‘Sonny’s Blues’ to the chilling initiation of a racist in ‘Going to Meet the Man’, these tales, first published in 1965, explore the subtle and profound wounds that discrimination leaves – both in its victims and its perpetrators. 
‘He uses words as the sea uses waves’ Langston Hughes 
'Few, it seems to me, have driven their words with such passion' Guardian

The best of the stories are equal to the novels: try the title story, about the radicalisation of a white boy at a lynching, or the exceptional Sonny’s Blues, where a man copes with his brother’s addiction to heroin

His prose emits a long piercing scream as it takes off from the page like a fighter jet on a mission to drop a payload of explosive truths across enemy territory, flying fast and low, risking hostile and friendly fire

The stories carry Baldwin’s depth of sympathy . . . Only a reader with a heart of stone will fail to be moved to tears of recognition, sorrow and joy when ['Sonny's Blues'] reaches its conclusion

Baldwin refused to hold anyone&rsquo;s hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you

James Baldwin was born in 1924 in New York. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), which evokes his experiences as a boy preacher in Harlem, was an immediate success. Baldwin’s second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956) has become a landmark of gay literature and Another Country (1962) caused a literary sensation. His searing essay collections Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961) contain many of the works that made him an influential figure in the Civil Rights Movement. Baldwin published several other collections of non-fiction, including The Fire Next Time (1963) and No Name in the Street (1972). His short stories are collected in Going to Meet the Man (1965). His later works include the novels Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Just Above My Head (1979). 
 
James Baldwin won a number of literary fellowships: a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1986. He died in 1987 in France

‘There’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it.’The eight stories in this collection showcase the breadth of Baldwin’s imagination, empathy and social critique as he explores the subtle and profound wounds that discrimination leaves in both its victims and its perpetrators: from the down-and-out jazz pianist recovering from addiction in ‘Sonny’s Blues’ to the adolescent who hides his burgeoning sexuality from the church community that defines his world in ‘The Outing’ to the horrifying story of the initiation of a racist, as a deputy sheriff remembers his parents taking him to see the mutilation and murder of a black man by a gleeful mob in 'Going to Meet the Man'.First published in 1965, these tales of ingenuity, desperation, power and fear provide a snapshot of a writer at the height of his literary powers.

More Notes Of A Native Son

Nobody Knows My Name

'These essays ... live and grow in the mind' James Campbell, Independent 
 
Being a writer, says James Baldwin in this searing collection of essays, requires 'every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are'. His seminal 1961 follow-up to Notes on a Native Son shows him responding to his times and exploring his role as an artist with biting precision and emotional power: from polemical pieces on racial segregation and a journey to 'the Old Country' of the Southern states, to reflections on figures such as Ingmar Bergman and André Gide, and on the first great conference of African writers and artists in Paris. 
 
'Brilliant...accomplished...strong...vivid...honest...masterly' The New York Times 
 
'A bright and alive book, full of grief, love and anger' Chicago Tribune

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

In this tender, impassioned fourth novel, James Baldwin created one of his most striking characters: a man struggling to become himself. 
 
'Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it' 
 
At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, we see the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the world of the theatre lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that seems poised on the brink of racial war. In this tender, angry 1968 novel, James Baldwin created one of his most striking characters: a man struggling to become himself. 
 
'The emotion surrounding family attachment... is deeply felt and is one reasons he continues to be read with such intensity' Colm Tóibín

Truth-telling, witness bearing, soul stirring writing

The emotion surrounding family attachment... is deeply felt and is one of the reasons he continues to be read with such intensity

A jazzlike reconfiguration of Baldwin's own life, with existing parts examined and rearranged and new parts added

One of the few essential novelists of our time

'Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it' 
 
At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, we see the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the world of the theatre lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that seems poised on the brink of racial war. In this tender, angry 1968 novel, James Baldwin created one of his most striking characters: a man struggling to become himself.

Dark Days

'So the club rose, the blood came down, and his bitterness and his anguish and his guilt were compounded' 
 
Drawing on Baldwin's own experiences of prejudice in an America violently divided by race, these searing essays - Dark Days, The Price of the Ticket and The White Man's Guilt - blend the intensely personal with the political to envisage a better world. 
 
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

James Baldwin

'We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation' 
 
James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963, galvanising a nation and giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement. Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is at once a powerful evocation of Baldwin's early life in Harlem and an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice. 
 
'Sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle ... all presented in searing, brilliant prose' The New York Times Book Review 
 
'Baldwin writes with great passion ... it reeks of truth, as the ghettoes of New York and London, Chicago and Manchester reek of our hypocrisy' Sunday Times

The Fire Next Time

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Celebrate the centenary of James Baldwin's birth with a selection of Penguin Modern Classics, featuring his most compelling works. Pick any three for £21.

James Baldwin

Books by James Baldwin

James Baldwin pick & mix bundle

Articles about James Baldwin

‘His true genius lies in the universality of his observations’: Reflections on James Baldwin’s legacy

Where to start reading James Baldwin’s books

12 James Baldwin quotes that are still painfully true today

Discover James Baldwin's books in audio