first edition
1963 · (New York)
by Baldwin, James
(New York): Dell, 1963. Near fine.. First paperback edition of novel that Baldwin said "makes GIOVANNI seem conservative—almost square." Baldwin's 1962 novel was written over the course of more than a decade, during the author's stays in Greenwich Village, in William Styron's Connecticut guest house, in Paris, and finally in Istanbul: a writing process so long and so spread out over the globe because "I couldn't find the peace of mind—the space free of other people—to write anywhere in America" (Weatherby). The result, banned for obscenity in New Orleans and panned by a petulant Norman Mailer as "abominably written" except for the sex, was also a bestseller (truncated)