Another Country, James Baldwin
Another Country, James Baldwin
4 Rating(s)
List: $29.95 | Sale: $20.97
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Another Country

Author: James Baldwin

Narrator: Dion Graham

Unabridged: 16 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/01/2009

Synopsis

Published in 1962, this is an emotionally intense novel of love, hatred, race, and America in the 1950s. Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, 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. It is a novel of passions—sexual, racial, political, artistic—that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the 1950s.

About James Baldwin

James Baldwin (1924–1987), acclaimed New York Times bestselling author, was educated in New York. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, received excellent reviews and was immediately recognized as establishing a profound and permanent new voice in American letters. The appearance of The Fire Next Time in 1963, just as the civil rights movement was exploding across the American South, galvanized the nation and continues to reverberate as perhaps the most prophetic and defining statement ever written of the continuing costs of Americans’ refusal to face their own history. It became a national bestseller, and Baldwin was featured on the cover of Time. The next year, he was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and collaborated with the photographer Richard Avedon on Nothing Personal, a series of portraits of America intended as a eulogy for the slain Medger Evers. His other collaborations include A Rap on Race with Margaret Mead and A Dialogue with the poet–activist Nikki Giovanni. He also adapted Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X into One Day When I Was Lost. He was made a commander of the French Legion of Honor a year before his death, one honor among many he achieved in his life.

About Dion Graham

Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting.

Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on May 20, 2024

well sheesh. james baldwin's books are one of a kind. they range, for me, in pleasurable reading — some i must drag myself through, some seem to open themselves up to the reader, but i am always left struck and wondering. this book, uncharacteristically lengthy for baldwin's works, was not one that i......more

Goodreads review by Tim on April 03, 2023

I read James Baldwin's Another Country because I thought it would give me the opportunity to revisit the New York City I had visited in the summer of 1966. I thought it would give me a chance to once again experience the New York City I revisited in both Patti Smith's Just Kids and Dave Van Ronk's T......more

Goodreads review by Rosh on January 22, 2019

It took 15 years for Baldwin to complete this novel. He travelled all across from Paris to Turkey in poor health, depressed, and feeling that he had lost sight of his aims as a writer. On the brink of suicide, this novel had almost killed him. And while reading this you can sense Baldwin's sense of......more

Goodreads review by Jesse on July 16, 2015

Wow. Just... wow. Kind of weird—my reaction is not declare Another Country a new favorite, I just didn't love it in that way. And yet, and yet, it penetrated deeply, perhaps more deeply than some books I do consider my favorite... Perhaps this has to do with how perplexing Baldwin is as an author—it......more

Goodreads review by Flo on March 04, 2024

There is something so miraculous in the way James Baldwin writes about being defeated by society and yet can still find so much affection for a life that could have been, if the realities of being black or gay in America were different. I think that the hope the characters have comes from their drea......more

Quotes

“James Baldwin has grown into the wise, guiding elder of the United States’s fractured racial conversation…Baldwin’s Another Country, published in 1962, a year before The Fire Next Time, is the novel that plays out his conflicting visions of interracial intimacy. The story taps a deep well. The drama of severely injured friendships and sexual relationships can be read as an allegory of a brutal struggle within America’s collective racial and sexual psyche.” Los Angeles Review of Books

“Dion Graham’s low-key performance is a great way to re-read Another Country and imagine this world all over again.” BookRiot (audio review)

“Despite its dated lingo and moral standards, this classic audiobook feels both fresh and potent. One reason is the narration of Dion Graham, whose velvet intonation is a perfect match for this novel. The other reason for its freshness might be Baldwin’s nonjudgmental style—particularly in regard to the racial and sexual tensions…Baldwin’s encapsulation of late ’50s Greenwich Village seems spot on, like a perfectly preserved diorama. It’s hard to believe that it’s taken almost five decades to bring this epic story to audio, but this classy unabridged recording is definitely worth the wait.” AudioFile

“Brilliantly and fiercely told.” New York Times

“An almost unbearable, tumultuous, blood-pounding experience.” Washington Post

“A novel that explores the interconnectedness of the character’s lives and how easily things can get tangled up. Baldwin has influenced a whole generation of queer writers and remains one of the greats.” BookRiot

Awards

  • PBS Great American Read selection
  • BookRiot Pick
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