One of the best novels by African American author James Baldwin. A painful story of love and racial injustice in 1970s New York that inspired the new film by Barry Jenkins, director of the Oscar-winning Moonlight.
In this great classic of 20th-century American literature, James Baldwin gives voice to Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl pregnant by a young sculptor named Fonny. High school sweethearts, they decided to marry and start a family, but their plans are shattered when he is unjustly accused of rape and imprisoned.
Through Tish’s narrative, we follow the love story of this African American couple while witnessing the family’s desperate attempt to free Fonny from jail and prove his innocence, in a fight against the hostility and injustice of a racist and corrupt system.
First published in 1974, the violence and sensuality of Baldwin’s novel continue to strike and move consciences with the sad and passionate rhythm of the most heartfelt blues, fueled on these pages by the purest love and the survival drive of beings marginalized by the color of their skin and their poverty.
Critics have said...
“Today, as yesterday, American narrative cannot be understood without having read Baldwin.”
El País
“The blues of Beale Street is a moving and painful story. It is so vividly human and so clearly based on reality that it seems timeless; an art that has no need for aesthetic tricks.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review
“Baldwin is an extraordinarily good, brave, and emotionally rich writer: from rage to exquisite tenderness. He is truly one of the good ones, one of the great writers the United States has produced.”
Paul Auster
“If Van Gogh was our saint-artist of the 19th century, in the 20th century we have James Baldwin.”
Michael Ondaatje
“One of the best books written by Baldwin, perhaps the best of all.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A great work within African American fiction in the United States [...]. His best novel.”
The New Republic
“A powerful love story. Luminous, tragic, unrestrained, as these kinds of stories should be.”
Miguel Artaza, Pérgola
“A story with a classic flavor, of incomparable intensity, sensuality, and humanity.”
Raül Jiménez, Indienauta
