Baldwin’s sixth and last novel, Just Above My Head, set against a vividly drawn background of the civil rights movement of the sixties.

James Baldwin's final novel is the work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers
- The New York Times Book Review

Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again. The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this stunning, unforgettable novel. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, James Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the forbidden passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall 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.

When Arthur Montana, world-renowned 'Emperor of Soul', is found dead in a London pub, his grief-stricken brother looks back over thirty years in the lives of their group of friends: from their childhood spent preaching and singing in Harlem churches, to their struggles with war and poverty, and their encounters with wealth, love and fame.

Set against a vividly drawn background of the civil rights movement of the sixties, Baldwin's last novel is a monumental saga that ranges from New York to Paris, Korea to Africa to portray how profoundly racial politics can shape life, especially in the private business of love.

Magnificent in the power of its compassionate vision, Just Above My Head is also a novel about history - the passage of three extraordinary individuals through time, as they shape and are shaped by the events of the last three decades.

'This is the work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers'
- Edmund White, Washington Post

'Warm, melancholy . . . Hall Montana's voice is the conduit for Baldwin's most distinctive quality as a writer, his abundant tenderness'
- The New York Times