James Baldwin's "Another Country"

A deeply depressing novel in many ways, as its characters, black and white, try to love, or just simply care, across racial and gender lines, and fail. And yet its despair is somehow bracing, because it tells the truth about the difficulties, and embodies it in characters drawn from so deep within that one has to marvel at Baldwin's ability to get under the skin of not just the black characters but the white ones as well.

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