If Beale Street Could Talk

by James Baldwin

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Book cover for If Beale Street Could Talk

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The inspiration for the new film from Oscar award-winning director Barry Jenkins

'Achingly beautiful' Guardian

Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin's novel is Tish nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice for Fonny. To this love story James Baldwin brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.

'If Beale Street Could Talk affirms not only love between a man and a woman, but love of a type that is dealt with only rarely in contemporary fiction - that between members of a family' Joyce Carol Oates

  • ISBN10 1627652795
  • ISBN13 9781627652797
  • Publish Date 10 October 2006 (first published 17 June 1974)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Imprint Turtleback Books
  • Format Hardcover (Library Binding)
  • Pages 197
  • Language English