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Another Country

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Another Country

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Dion Graham
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

When Another Country appeared in 1962, it caused a literary sensation. James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit.

©1962, 1963 James Baldwin (P)2024 Penguin Audio African American City Life Classics Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Urban World Literature

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Critic reviews

'A masterwork... an almost unbearable, tumultuous, blood-pounding experience.' Washington Post

'In Another Country, Baldwin created the essential American drama of the century.' Colm Tóibín
All stars
Most relevant
A tulry great book. The narrator is great. They don't Come much better than this.

The characters are voiced so well by the narrator bringing them to life. He also speaks the very occasional French sentences perfectly too, until a French characteter apears and he reads it in a comedy French accent.

I started Giovani's Room but had the same problem and couldn't listen. Luckily the character isn't a key one here.

Another problem with the French aspect is that for some reason James Baldwin expects the reader to understand French. There are a few key sentences in French with no translation.

Anyway, it's a blockbuster of a book despite that. Epic and worthwhile.

Epic tale, a real masterpiece.

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It’s not clear to me how anyone can get so deeply inside the human condition as Baldwin does here

Amazingly well read

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A book that has transcended its time and proves to be truly (perhaps sadly) timeless. Baldwin will ultimately come to be regarded as one of literature’s unique voices.
Here he wrong foots is and any expectations we have, quite early in the narrative. Choosing not to lean into plot, but to explore a group of characters and the cultural context that gives rose to them.
His characters are not really a societal cross-section in that they tend to belong even if only tangentially, to a world peopled only by intelligent, creative, liberally minded and sexually transgressive types.
But their lives, loves, desires, bitternesses, anger, humiliations and choices, are detailed with a powerful prose style that is always ‘real’ even as the author’s own poetic qualities make the book so engaging.
I don’t know if Baldwin was especially insightful, maybe he seemed so to readers over sixty years ago when the book was first published, but there are still millions who would be educated by this book, at least in the justifiable anger that many African Americans then and now feel towards white people. And how that societies continuing iniquities negatively mark the lives of so many millions of black people.
Though his prose is immediately impressive and engaging, it takes a while for the characters human warmth to touch us, but ultimately they do.
An important book, beautifully written. Baldwin will last forever …

A 20c Classic that deserves its rep

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like the pace of language, themes of the story, insight into black America and NY and relationships. liked the reading

first Baldwin books, loved it!

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This is a wonderful and articulate story; so carefully observed - intimate and gentle; visceral and uncompromising.
I so liked the interludes of Blues singing - the French accents were borderline but the American voices felt perfect.

Visceral

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