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Zusatztext “If Van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint! James Baldwin is our twentieth-century one.” — Michael Ondaatje “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 Informationen zum Autor James Baldwin; Introduction by Colm Tóibín Klappentext James Baldwin's groundbreaking novel about love and the fear of love is set among the bohemian bars and nightclubs of 1950s Paris.David is a young American expatriate who has just proposed marriage to his girlfriend, Hella. While she is away on a trip, David meets a bartender named Giovanni to whom he is drawn in spite of himself. Soon the two are spending the night in Giovanni's curtainless room, which he keeps dark to protect their privacy. But Hella's return to Paris brings the affair to a crisis, one that rapidly spirals into tragedy. 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. Introduction by Colm Tóibín I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow. I watch my reflection in the darkening gleam of the window pane. My reflection is tall, perhaps rather like an arrow, my blond hair gleams. My face is like a face you have seen many times. My ancestors conquered a continent, pushing across death-laden plains, until they came to an ocean which faced away from Europe into a darker past. I may be drunk by morning but that will not do any good. I shall take the train to Paris anyway. The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity on the straight-backed, wooden, third-class seats will be the same, and I will be the same. We will ride through the same changing countryside northward, leaving behind the olive trees and the sea and all of the glory of the stormy southern sky, into the mist and rain of Paris. Someone will offer to share a sandwich with me, someone will offer me a sip of wine, someone will ask me for a match. People will be roaming the corridors outside, looking out of windows, looking in at us. At each stop, recruits in their baggy brown uniforms and colored hats will open the compartment door to ask Complet? We will all nod Yes, like conspirators, smiling faintly at each other as they continue through the train. Two or three of them will end up before our compartment door, shouting at each other in their heavy, ribald voices, smoking their dreadful army cigarettes. There will be a girl sitting opposite me who will wonder why I have not been flirting with her, who will be set on edge by the presence of the recruits. It will all be the same, only I will be stiller. And the countryside is still tonight, this countryside reflected through my image in the pane. This house is just outside a small summer resort — w...
