Read by Kevin Kenerly

The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this novel with a stunning, unforgettable experience. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that inflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Montana and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses-and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land. "If Van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our twentieth-century one." "A fine novel…It seems impossible for [Baldwin] to write with anything other than eloquence. His great and peculiar power is to re-create the maddening halfway house that the black man finds himself in late-twentieth-century America." "The work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers…glimpses of family life in Harlem, rapturous music-making in the churches, moments of uneasiness in even the most casual meetings between whites and blacks-scenes that Baldwin seems preternaturally gifted in understanding." "This not a novel to read anywhere you can't sit down: Just above My Head has required the most emotional work from me out of all the books I've read. But if you have the time, it will reward you with the unshakable feeling that you really have lived in the world of its characters and have come to understand something about yourself." "A big new novel by James Baldwin is always of major interest, and there are scenes here of Baldwin at his earthy, lyrical best."

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