If Beale Street Could Talk

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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

'Achingly beautiful' Guardian

Harlem in the 1970s: the black soul of New York City. Tish is nineteen and the man she loves - her lifelong friend and the father of her unborn child - has been jailed for a crime he did not commit. As their families come together to fight for his freedom, will their love be enough?

'Soulful . . . Racial injustice may flatten "the black experience" into one single, fearful, constantly undermined way of life - but black life, black love, is so much larger than that . . . It's one of the signature lessons of Baldwin's work that blackness contains multitudes' Vanity Fair

'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

©1974 James Baldwin (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • 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

  • Soulful . . . Racial injustice may flatten “the black experience” into one single, fearful, constantly undermined way of life-but black life, black love, is so much larger than that . . . It’s one of the signature lessons of Baldwin’s work that blackness contains multitudes

    Vanity Fair

  • Truth-telling, witness bearing, soul stirring writing

    Cornel West

  • The spirit of Jimmy’s work is of a high moral prophetic vision

    Amriri Baraka

  • One of the few essential novelists of our time

    New Statesman

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