Giovanni's Room

Giovanni's Room is James Baldwin's second novel, first published in 1956. The book focuses on the events in the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men in his life, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni who he meets at a Parisian gay bar. Giovanni's Room is noteworthy for bringing complex representations of homosexuality to a reading public with empathy and artistry, thereby fostering a broader public discourse of issues regarding same-sex desire. David, a young American man whose girlfriend has gone off to... Spain to contemplate marriage, is left alone in Paris and begins an affair with an Italian man, Giovanni. The entire story is narrated by David during "the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life," when Giovanni will be executed. David, in the South of France, is about to board a train back in Paris. His girlfriend Hella, to whom he had proposed before she went to Spain, has returned to the United States. As for Giovanni, he is about to be guillotined. David remembers his first experience with a boy, Joey, who lived in Brooklyn, too.
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