Reader Score
86%
86% of readers
recommend this book
Caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality, David struggles for self-knowledge during one long, dark night--"the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life." With sharp, probing insight, Giovanni's Room tells an impassioned, deeply moving story that lays bare the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.
COLM TÓIBÍN is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning author. His novels include The Master, winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Le prix du meilleur livre étranger, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction; and Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Novel Award. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
"Baldwin writes . . . with unusual candor and yet with such dignity and intensity." --The New York Times
"Absorbing . . . [with] immediate emotional impact." --The Washington Post
"Violent, excruciating beauty." --San Francisco Chronicle
"Exciting . . . A book that belongs in the top rank of fiction." --The Atlantic
"Baldwin, in this novel, made clear that he could work wonders with the light and shade of intimacy . . . The tone continues to shift back and forth from pure eloquence to soaring sequences to simple description . . . But he can follow this soon with passages that are pure Baldwin, that have a gorgeous, fearless sound, tempered by dark knowledge and pain, that make clear that Baldwin was ready to become the greatest American prose stylist of his generation."
--from the new Introduction by Colm Tóibín