The Fire Next Time
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4.1 • 43 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'Sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle ... all presented in searing, brilliant prose' The New York Times Book Review
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.
'A seminal meditation on race by one of our greatest writers' Barack Obama
'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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Speakers or headsets will have to be turned up to listen to Jesse L. Martin's low, slow reading of Baldwin's classic long essay on racism and African-American identity. Martin seeks to be respectful of Baldwin, but he ends up rendering the meaning and the force of his work relatively inert. Pausing in poorly selected places, placing emphasis where little should be placed, Martin does not convey the precision and anger of Baldwin's prose. Instead, Baldwin's book becomes Great Literature, to be intoned and honored, but not truly grasped. Readers with an interest in Baldwin's work will be far better served by reading his prose to themselves than having Martin read it to them. A Vintage paperback.
Customer Reviews
Truly incredible - a must read!
What is there to even say— this is James Baldwin.
A truly incredible book, a must read for anyone interested in racial Justice, change, love and hope.
EZ
A prolific read from a prolific and wonderful writer. Full of human anguish it cannot fail to move. A must read for anyone with an ounce of humanity and clarity to see the "crime" that white America (and frankly almost all whites) have inflicted upon black people and continues to do so some 50 years on despite the USA having a mixed race President.
The difference between 1964 when this book was written and now is that race discrimination on the basis of colour in the USA and Europe has become more subtle, but no less heinous and destructive.