Fire Next Time

'A seminal meditation on race by one of our greatest writers' Barack Obama 'We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation'James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963, galvanising a nation and giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement. Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is at once a powerful evocation of Baldwin's early life in Harlem and an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice. 'Sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle ... all presented in searing, brilliant prose' The New York Times Book Review'Baldwin writes with great passion ... it reeks of truth, as the ghettoes of New York and London, Chicago and Manchester reek of our hypocrisy' Sunday Times'The great poet-prophet of the civil rights movement ... his seminal work' Guardian

Riveting . . . part of Baldwin's enduring power is that he was not a political thinker. He was interested in the soul's dark spaces much more than in the body politic., The great poet-prophet of the civil rights movement ... his seminal work, Sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle . . . all presented in searing, brilliant prose, Baldwin writes with great passion ... it reeks of truth, as the ghettoes of New York and London, Chicago and Manchester reek of our hypocrisy, A true prophet . . . his thought and its utterance are nothing less than majestical

Born in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin was a novelist, essayist, play­wright, poet, social critic, and the author of more than twenty books. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay col­lection The Fire Next Time was a bestseller that made him an influential figure in the civil rights movement. Baldwin spent many years in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in 1987.