PENGUIN TWENTIETH-CENTURY CLASSICS

JUST ABOVE MY HEAD

James Baldwin was born and educated in New York. Go Tell It on the Mountain, his first novel, was published in 1953. Evoking brilliantly his experiences as a boy preacher in Harlem, it was an immediate success and was followed by Giovanni’s Room, which explores the theme of homosexual love in a sensitive and compelling way. Another Country (1963) created something of a literary explosion and was followed in 1964 by two non-fiction books, Nobody Knows My Name and Notes of a Native Son, which contain several of the stories and essays that brought him fame in America. Nobody Knows My Name was selected by the American library Association as one of the outstanding books of its year. Going to Meet the Man was James Baldwin’s first collection of stories. He also published several collections of essays, including The Fire Next Time (1963), Nothing Personal (1964), No Name in the Street (1971), The Devil Finds Work (1976) and Evidence of Things Not Seen (1983), and wrote two plays, The Amen Corner (1955) and Blues for Mr Charlie (1965). His later novels include If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Little Man, Little Man (1975). Many of his books are published by Penguin.

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-in-Aid. He was made a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1986. He died in 1987.

The Times obituary declared, The best of his work … stands comparison with any of its period to come out of the United States,’ while Newsweek described him as ’an angry writer, yet his intelligence was so provoking and his sentences so elegant that he quickly became the black writer that white liberals liked to fear’.

 

 

Books by James Baldwin

Go Tell it on the Mountain

Notes of a Native Son

Giovanni’s Room

Nobody Knows My Name

Another Country

The Fire Next Time

Nothing Personal

(with Richard Avedon)

Blues for Mister Charlie

Going to Meet the Man

Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone

The Amen Corner

A Rap on Race

(with Margaret Mead)

No Name in the Street

A Dialogue

(with Nikki Giovanni)

One Day When I Was Lost

If Beale Street Could Talk

The Devil Finds Work

Little Man, Little Man. A Story of Childhood

(with Yoran Cazac)