The stone face (1963)

NYRB’s 2021 reissue brought renewed attention to Smith’s 1963 novel about a Black American journalist in Paris. What first seems refuge becomes an encounter with French violence against Algerians and the limits of expatriate comfort. The novel deserves discussion for making solidarity a difficult choice with consequences. It includes racist violence and historical trauma; its Paris is deliberately more troubling than the familiar artist-abroad idyll.