Baldwin doesn’t so much tell a story as reach in and grab hold of your very soul and thrust you into the deepest fears and desires, transport you to places and slap you with the smells and aches and ecstasies of his characters, of bold fear-filled mothers, of self-righteous blinkered passers, of young idealist lovers, of conflicted heartbroken fathers, of young men looked (down) upon and never seen, in a nation set against every smallest peaceful pursuit of the minutest pleasures of a battered and marginalised population.

This story is as relevant now as it was when Baldwin first penned it.

A few tumultuously emotional raging and sorrowful hours of reading that if ever taken seriously might waken and transform the skewed system of the world’s so-called ‘free’ nation.