"BELONGS IN THE TOP RANK OF FICTION": FIRST EDITION OF JAMES BALDWIN'S GIOVANNI'S ROOM

BALDWIN, James. Giovanni's Room. New York: Dial, 1956. Octavo, original half black cloth, original dust jacket. $2700.

First edition of Baldwin's second novel, a work that "profoundly explores love" in its many dimensions.

Set in Paris, where Baldwin lived from 1948 to 1957, Giovanni's Room "belongs in the top rank of fiction" (Atlantic). In this, his second novel, "Baldwin depicts a man torn by his love for a woman and his equally strong love for a man… [and] profoundly explores love as illuminated and defined by homosexuality" (Vinson, 85). The novel makes "clear that Baldwin could work wonders with the light and shade of intimacy, that he could move easily and effortlessly into a whispered prose… then, with equal facility, evoke the excitement of a crowded bar filled with sexual expectation" (New Yorker).

Book about-fine, dust jacket with faint foxing, tiny chip to head of slightly toned spine, extremely good.