The landmark work on race in America from James Baldwin whose life & words are immortalized in the Oscar-nominated film I Am Not Your Negro' We the black & the white deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation' James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963 galvanising a nation & giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters' The Fire Next Time is at once a powerful evocation of Baldwin's early life in Harlem & an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice ' Sermon ultimatum confession deposition testament & chronicle all presented in searing brilliant prose' The New York Times Book Review' Baldwin writes with great passion it reeks of truth as the ghettoes of New York & London Chicago & Manchester reek of our hypocrisy' Sunday Times' The great poet-prophet of the civil rights movement his seminal work' Guardian