Giovanni's Room

Baldwin's gripping and controversial novel is his most relentless exploration of sexuality and a classic of gay literature. In the Paris of the 1950s, teeming with émigrés and marked by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American man finds that despite his determination to live the conventional life he imagines for himself, he cannot suppress his desires. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a romance with an Italian bartender—confused and tormented by his sexual identity. The BBC included Giovanni's Room among the 100 most inspiring novels written in English. This cult classic from 1956 is now being published in Czech for the very first time.