‘Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it.’

At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly killed by a heart attack. From there, as he hovers between life and death, he remembers the choices that made him into someone enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. As between Leo’s childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the theatre world- there lies the wilderness of desire and loss, of shame and rage. This, as the anguish of being black in a society that seems poised on the brink of another racial war bleeds into the streets, cobblestones and corners of the city.

In this tender, impassioned 1968 novel, James Baldwin has created one of his most striking characters: a man struggling to become himself.