The book is not so much about homosexuality as it is about what happens when you are so afraid that you end up unable to love anyone.
James Baldwin

Marked by a homosexual experience in his adolescence, David, a young American, finds himself in 1950s Paris searching for his inner balance. During the night that brings the tragic conclusion to his story, David recounts his parallel relationship with Giovanni and his fiancée, Hella, his struggle between erotic desire and conventional morality, the conflict between the truth of the body and the lies of the mind.

This classic tale of passion and death, first published in 1956 and reflecting the author’s own struggle with sexual ambiguity, remains a powerful book thanks to the simplicity of its dramatic structure and the intensity with which its plot unfolds, revealing to us unknown aspects of the human heart.

Baldwin uses language as the sea uses its waves; it flows and crashes, advances and retreats, rises and then bows and disappears... thought becomes poetry and poetry enlightens thought.
Langston Hughes, poet

A gripping book thanks to the simplicity of its central conflict and the passionate vision of its author.
Colm Tóibín, author

Bold, distinctive, with literary grace and courage.
Caryl Phillips, author

Superb! A daring feat of imaginative courage.
Guardian

An angry writer, but so provocatively intelligent, with such good writing, that he soon became the black writer white progressives loved to fear.
Newsweek