
Giovanni's Room
A Novel (Vintage International)
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Narrated by:
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Matt Bomer
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Kevin Young
About this listen
James Baldwin's groundbreaking novel with a new introduction.
Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni. With sharp, probing insight, James Baldwin's classic narrative delves into the mystery of love and tells a deeply moving story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
©1956 James Baldwin (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one."—Michael Ondaatje
"A young American involved with both a woman and a man...Baldwin writes of these matters with unusual candor and yet with such dignity and intensity."—The New York Times
"Absorbing...[with] immediate emotional impact."—The Washington Post
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- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.
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Who Else Laughed, Cried, and Shuddered?
- By Jennifer Chichester on 09-16-22
By: Freida McFadden
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The Pearl and the Onion
- By: Brittany K. Allen
- Narrated by: Anna Chlumsky, Jasmine Cephas-Jones
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Original Recording
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When our story begins, Julia Child is an eager but inexperienced codebreaker longing to prove herself in the male-dominated world of intelligence, and Josephine Baker is, well, Josephine Baker—a world-famous entertainer who is now leading a double life as a spy for the French Resistance. When a golden opportunity arises to infiltrate a high-stakes Nazi gala in Vichy France, Julia must put aside her by-the-book mentality to assist her unorthodox new partner.
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Delightful entertainment!
- By Ann on 03-27-25
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The House on the Water
- A Novella
- By: Margot Hunt
- Narrated by: Taylor Schilling
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
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Every year, Caroline Reed takes a trip with her best friend, Esme Lamont. They’re usually accompanied by their spouses - but this year, everything’s changed. Esme has just gone through a bitter divorce, and Caroline's wondering if her own marriage is reaching its breaking point as she and her husband, John, cope with the discovery that their son has been abusing drugs. Still, the inseparable duo books a weeklong stay at a beach-front home in Shoreham, Florida, inviting Esme’s brother, Nick, and his new husband. After a blissful first night in the vacation home, tragedy strikes.
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Wonderful Story
- By David M. Wilcox on 12-04-20
By: Margot Hunt
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Mary Jane
- By: Amy Herzog
- Narrated by: Rachel McAdams, April Matthis, Brenda Wehle, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 16 mins
- Original Recording
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Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams stars in Mary Jane, a poignant and intimate drama following a single mother’s journey caring for her chronically ill young son. Set in New York City, the play unfolds in two parts—Mary Jane's small Queens apartment and a pediatric hospital. With unflinching honesty and unexpected humor, we witness Mary Jane's tireless devotion, her interactions with medical professionals, and her struggle to maintain her sense of self.
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Amazing performance
- By Andrew Reynolds on 12-28-24
By: Amy Herzog
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Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem.
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Trent Preszler thought he was living the life he always wanted, with a job at a winery and a seaside Long Island home, when he was called back to the life he left behind. After years of estrangement, his cancer-stricken father had invited him to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. It would be the last time he saw his father alive. Preszler’s only inheritance was a beat-up wooden toolbox that had belonged to his father, who was a cattle rancher, rodeo champion, and Vietnam War Bronze Star Medal recipient. This family heirloom befuddled Preszler.
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So good
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Another Country
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Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. Another Country is a work that is as powerful today as it was 40 years ago - and expertly narrated by Dion Graham.
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Powerful and sad
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You're Embarrassing Yourself
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Writer, actor, and director Desiree Akhavan shares the stories she was told to shut up about—hilarious, horny, heartbreaking tales of a life in pursuit of art, love, and a better haircut.
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The Parlour Wife
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With the announcement of World War Two and a change that sends shockwaves through her family, Kehinde is forced to put aside her dreams of writing and become the third wife of Mr Ogunjobi. Kehinde makes her peace by selling snacks at a small market. When she gets the chance to assist the leader of the Lagos Women’s Market Association, fighting for the rights the British are trying to take away, Kehinde finally feels useful again. But if her husband finds out he’ll abandon her.
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This was a slow burn
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Go Tell It on the Mountain
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Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem.
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Haunting
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Little and Often
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Trent Preszler thought he was living the life he always wanted, with a job at a winery and a seaside Long Island home, when he was called back to the life he left behind. After years of estrangement, his cancer-stricken father had invited him to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. It would be the last time he saw his father alive. Preszler’s only inheritance was a beat-up wooden toolbox that had belonged to his father, who was a cattle rancher, rodeo champion, and Vietnam War Bronze Star Medal recipient. This family heirloom befuddled Preszler.
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So good
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Another Country
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Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. Another Country is a work that is as powerful today as it was 40 years ago - and expertly narrated by Dion Graham.
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Powerful and sad
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Writer, actor, and director Desiree Akhavan shares the stories she was told to shut up about—hilarious, horny, heartbreaking tales of a life in pursuit of art, love, and a better haircut.
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- By: Foluso Agbaje
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With the announcement of World War Two and a change that sends shockwaves through her family, Kehinde is forced to put aside her dreams of writing and become the third wife of Mr Ogunjobi. Kehinde makes her peace by selling snacks at a small market. When she gets the chance to assist the leader of the Lagos Women’s Market Association, fighting for the rights the British are trying to take away, Kehinde finally feels useful again. But if her husband finds out he’ll abandon her.
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This was a slow burn
- By Moira on 03-28-25
By: Foluso Agbaje
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Notes of a Native Son
- By: James Baldwin
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Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of Black life and Black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era.
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Masterful Essayist
- By Andre on 09-30-16
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At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.
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Sad and moving and powerful and beautiful
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Told through the eyes of Tish, a 19-year-old girl in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and is imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions - affection, despair, and hope.
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The narrator did her thing, I love it!!!
- By Vicky on 03-22-16
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Nothing Personal
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James Baldwin’s critique of American society at the height of the civil rights movement brings his prescient thoughts on social isolation, race, and police brutality to a new generation of listeners.
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The timing… 1/20/25
- By Leslie on 01-20-25
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Just Above My Head
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The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this novel with a stunning, unforgettable experience. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that inflames his nonfiction work.
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Wonderful poignant story
- By Africa on 12-02-18
By: James Baldwin
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Lie with Me
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- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he’s never forgotten, a hidden affair with a gorgeous boy named Thomas during their last year of high school. Without ever acknowledging they know each other in the halls, they steal time to meet in secret, carrying on a passionate, world-altering affair.
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Memoir or fiction, either way it's enthralling.
- By Keith G on 05-08-19
By: Philippe Besson, and others
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Going to Meet the Man
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.
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Punch in the gut
- By Rebecca on 05-08-17
By: James Baldwin
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Great American Authors Read from Their Works, Volume 1
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- By: Calliope Author Readings, James Baldwin
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James Baldwin gives an electrifying reading about a young gay American in Paris recalling a dramatic and transforming incident from his boyhood, as he struggles to accept his sexual identity.
By: Calliope Author Readings, and others
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Swimming in the Dark
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Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide - a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of Andre Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.
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One of the Best Contemporary Novels Ever
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The Devil Finds Work
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Baldwin's personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist.
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A Critical Masterpiece.
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Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
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At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty.
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Long story
- By A. Baulkman on 08-01-24
By: James Baldwin
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Nobody Knows My Name
- More Notes of a Native Son
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name records the last months of this famed American writer's 10-year self-exile in Europe, his return to America and to Harlem, and his first trip south at the time of the school integration battles. It contains Baldwin's controversial and intimate profiles of Norman Mailer, Richard Wright, and Ingmar Bergman. And it explores such varied themes as the relations between blacks and whites, the role of blacks in America and in Europe, and the question of sexual identity.
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Excellent on all counts!
- By Stephen York on 12-03-17
By: James Baldwin
What listeners say about Giovanni's Room
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Donna Kearns
- 03-22-25
Heartbreaking
One hundred years ago and so little has changed. I want to read it again and savor the language
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- Michael
- 01-02-25
Beautiful language and pacing - I couldn’t stop till it was done
This is a beautiful book, written in 1956. Never before have I understood the strength of desire and the impossible place society demands of us.
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- Jennifer Knox
- 01-04-25
Heartbreaking
For this book to be nearly 70 years old, a lot of these problems are still relevant to this day. Such a heartbreaking and tragic story. Hats off to Baldwin!
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- Melissa Miles
- 02-24-25
Metaphor
James Baldwin does a remarkable job in creating metaphors throughout this saga of homo and heterosexuality. Powerful book.
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- Joann Gilles
- 01-28-25
The production felt like listening to dramatic radio. Thoroughly enjoyable. Baldwin’s writing is beautiful.
Felt a little dated, but, of course it is of another time. Things have changed so much.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-02-25
Masterpiece
Very well written, poetic masterpiece of literature! James Baldwin writes in a way that is so beautifully constructed that it makes reader/listener fall in love with the very words and the characters. The book was ahead of its time and therefore one almost forgets the era in which it was actually written. It feels so contemporary that one forgets just how revolutionary it actually was! His positive and unapologetic dipiction of gay love is enriching and powerful. A must read or listen! Bravo James Baldwin!🎉🏳️🌈
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- Charisse Paradiso
- 09-07-24
Outstanding Narration
Matt Bomer's range of talent is evident in every piece of art of which he takes part. " Giovanni's Room" is no exception. His narration transports one into the story. Bien joué.
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3 people found this helpful
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- JCTHIEM
- 09-09-24
Finally got to it.
This has been in my wishlist for quite some time. I held off as many books from this era, especially those centered around love and relationships I find daunting to read. To my surprise I found this quite good. Having lived in Europe for a number of years I found the setting quite familiar and relatable. Characters came to life as they though they could be contemporary characters for the most part. given the books historical notoriety in the community I'm very pleased it's aged as well as it has.
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2 people found this helpful