Oct. 18, 1957: 524

John Bayley reviews Giovanni’s Room alongside Norman Lewis’s The Volcanoes Above Us. The novel described as possessing “outstanding quality”.

‘He [Baldwin] reminds us by contrast how tiring and distracting are his many compatriots… [One] feels as if he had read no one but Prevost, Constant and Madame de Lafayette, and through this calm, uninsistent medium the dreadfulness of his story really does strike a chill into one’s heart.’