Where to start with James Baldwin

French and American novelist, 1924–1987.

Best James Baldwin book to start with: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), on 4 of the 17 lists it could have made.

Start with Giovanni’s Room. It’s short, set mostly in Paris, and it follows an American man and the love he can’t admit to. It’s the quickest way to hear Baldwin’s voice: intense feeling in clear, direct sentences.

Go Tell It on the Mountain is the lists’ favourite and his first novel, and it’s drawn from his own upbringing in a Harlem church. It is more demanding than Giovanni’s Room and takes longer to get going. Another Country is a bigger book, set in mid-century New York, about friends who hurt each other across lines of race and sexuality.

Save Just Above My Head for later. It was his last novel, it is long, and it’s most rewarding for readers who already know the earlier work. If you’re unsure where to go after Giovanni’s Room, take his first novel next.