‘Sonny’s Blues’ is a key part of Baldwin’s canon, written at the height of his literary prowess, just one year before his masterpiece Giovanni’s Room. The story demonstrates many of the writing skills that Baldwin is known for, notably his ability to weave complex issues into beautifully simple stories that, at their heart, dive straight to the core of the human condition.

Devastatingly compact, pithy and the epitome of the American author’s iceberg theory, Hills like white elephants is one of Ernest Hemingway’s most well-known and celebrated pieces of short fiction.