The Fire Next Time (Vintage International) - Softcover

James Baldwin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067974472X ISBN 13: 9780679744726

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1993

Synopsis

A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two "letters, " written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as "sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle...all presented in searing, brilliant prose, " The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.

About this title

Review:

"Basically the finest essay I've ever read. . . . Baldwin refused to hold anyone's hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you." --Ta-Nehisi Coates

"So eloquent in its passion and so scorching in its candor that it is bound to unsettle any reader." --The Atlantic

From the Back Cover:

'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

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 067974472X
• ISBN 13: 9780679744726
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128