Recommendations
Books Like Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
For readers of the Paris gay shame novel
If you loved Giovanni's Room — David's love for Giovanni and his refusal to acknowledge it, the formally perfect prose, and Baldwin's meditation on shame and self-deception — these books share the same interest in the cost of refusing to become who you are, the same European setting, and the same formal precision in treating difficult emotional material.
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Buy on AmazonGo Tell It on the Mountain
by James Baldwin
Baldwin's debut novel — the essential companion in his fiction; John Grimes's crisis of identity in the Harlem church is the American, religious companion to David's crisis of identity in Paris.
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Buy on AmazonAnother Country
by James Baldwin
Baldwin's third novel — the companion in his fiction; where Giovanni's Room is contained and formally perfect, Another Country is sprawling and epic; the explicit treatment of interracial and homosexual relationships in New York is the companion in the American setting.
- 3Buy on Amazon
Maurice
by E.M. Forster
Forster's posthumously published novel — the companion in 20th-century literature about a man who must choose between his sexuality and his social world; where David chooses social acceptability and destroys Giovanni, Maurice chooses love and chooses himself.
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Buy on AmazonCall Me By Your Name
by André Aciman
Aciman's novel about a summer love affair in Italy — the companion in literary fiction about a young man's first homosexual love in a European setting; where Baldwin writes about shame and refusal, Aciman writes about memory and acceptance.
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Buy on AmazonThe Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Wilde's novel — the companion in literary fiction about desire, beauty, corruption, and the cost of living a double life; Lord Henry and Dorian's relationship is the companion in the European literary tradition to David and Giovanni's.
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Buy on AmazonA Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
Yanagihara's novel about four college friends — the companion in contemporary literary fiction about shame, trauma, and the cost of what is done to us and what we do to ourselves; where Baldwin's shame is about sexual identity, Yanagihara's is about abuse and its aftermath.
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Buy on AmazonThe Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway's novel about American expatriates in Paris and Spain — the companion in American expatriate fiction; Baldwin's David in Paris is in the same tradition of Americans who go to Europe to escape or discover themselves, and his Paris is the companion to Hemingway's.
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Buy on AmazonThe Fire Next Time
by James Baldwin
Baldwin's essential essay — the companion nonfiction that shows his voice in its most direct and prophetic mode; reading the essay alongside the novel shows the range of Baldwin's intelligence and the common concerns of his art and his politics.
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