Another Country

By: James Baldwin

Narrated by: Dion Graham

First published in 1962, this is an emotionally intense novel of love, hatred, race, and liberal America in the 1960s, taking on the then-taboo themes of interracial couples, bisexuality, and extramarital affairs. Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. Another Country is a work that is as powerful today as it was 40 years ago - and expertly narrated by Dion Graham.©1990 Gloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks America

True life takes

I have never read a book so chillingly close to the messiness of real life. Thought provoking, confronting reflections on the lives of people we see walking by everyday.
How complex love,friendship and hate.
Loved it.

Challenging Book

This book was such a challenge for me. I appreciated the issues that came up that were steeped in racism, sexuality, and identity. It was complicated and messy in the way that those 3 things always are. The thing that was hard for me was that the women characters were not real people. They were not three dimensional or complicated. They were mostly just a tool used to say something about the male characters. Most of the time, I wrestled with whether the characters were just hateful and thoughtless with women or if it was both them and the author. In the end, I have to believe the author was too. Baldwin is an important and talented author, but he seemed to have no understanding of women whatsoever, white or black.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

The narrator was very good about setting the tone of the novel (with the exception of some horrible foreign accents) and did not distract from the story itself.

The prose and pace of the book are emotional and the conversations the characters have seem like they should be outdated but as it turns out, they were ahead of their time. This story is, unfortunately, still very relevant...

Dion Graham is a tour de force

Dion Graham is the best narrator on Audible, as far as I'm concerned. Flawless performance.

A moving classic by James Baldwin

The reading performance was quite skillful, although I found the breathy style the reader used for the narrator's voice distracting. All of the character's voices, however, were very well done and added to the effect of the author's words.