Told in the form of two intensely personal ‘letters’, The Fire Next Time is an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice, drawn from Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and his experience as a prominent cultural figure of the civil rights movement.

‘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

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.

This new collection presents James Baldwin the poet, including all nineteen poems from Jimmy’s Blues, as well as all the poems from a limited-edition volume called Gypsy, of which only 325 copies were ever printed and which was in production at the time of his death. Known for his relentless honesty and startlingly prophetic insights on issues of race, gender, class, and poverty, Baldwin is just as enlightening and bold in his poetry as in his famous novels and essays. The poems range from the extended dramatic narratives of “Staggerlee wonders” and “Gypsy” to the lyrical beauty of “Some days,” which has been set to music and interpreted by such acclaimed artists as Audra McDonald. Nikky Finney’s introductory essay reveals the importance, relevance, and rich rewards of these little-known works. Baldwin’s many devotees will find much to celebrate in these pages.

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 who he is, he rejects Giovanni for a ‘safe’ future as a married man. It is a decision that will bring tragedy.

‘Exquisite, a feat of fire-breathing, imaginative daring’ Guardian

‘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

‘I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.’

Drawing on James Baldwin’s own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if ‘the Holy Ghost were riding on the air’. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind.

‘His prose hit me, almost winding me with its intensity. I’d never read a novel that described loneliness and desire with such burning eloquence’ Douglas Field, Guardian

‘A beautiful, enduring, spirtual song of a novel’ Andrew O’Hagan

Baldwin’s ground-breaking second 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

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.

‘A seminal meditation on race by one of our greatest writers’ Barack Obama

‘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 great poet-prophet of the civil rights movement … his seminal work’ Guardian