It portrayed many themes that were taboo at the time of its release, including homosexuality, bisexuality, interracial couples, and extramarital affairs.

[1][2]: 195  In 1959, amidst growing fame, Baldwin received a $12,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support his work on the book.

At the novel's climax, Cass tells Richard about her affair with Eric, who in turn has a sexual encounter with Vivaldo, who himself learns about Ida's relationship with Ellis.

[6][7] Because Rufus is living in a predominantly racist era, his life is constantly affected by an internalization of this racism to the point where he hates himself.

[7] Another Country was unique at the time, in its attempt to explore race relations through romantic love instead of homosocial friendships.

[8] Their relationship and others (including the earlier coupling of Rufus and Leona) represent a struggle for love amidst the obstacles of race, sex, and modern society.

Facing each other without lies and perceiving the relationship realistically were much more important than which sexes were involved or how love was expressed, in Baldwin's opinion.… The whole racial situation, according to the novel, was basically a failure of love.Racial and sexual differences are compared and contrasted, both represented as areas for conflict that must be addressed en route to mature love.

[3][10] Stefanie Dunning wrote:[7] Rufus' death suggests that there is no black utopia, no place where he can escape the iniquities of racism.

More importantly, Another Country suggests that we have not yet found a model for thinking outside the box that frames our discussions of interraciality and same-sex eroticism.

[7] One of the most significant themes in Another Country is one's willingness to ignore parts of reality (including oneself) that one finds unpleasant or ego-dystonic.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, after considerable youthful struggles with self-acceptance of his homosexuality due to social ostracism in his hometown in Alabama, Eric eventually becomes the novel's most honest and open character.

He expressed not so much a discomfort with homosexuality as with the power paradigm and ultimate feminization that ensues after the physical act of black men sexually submitting to white men:It seems that many Negro homosexuals, acquiescing in this racial death-wish, are outraged and frustrated because in their sickness they are unable to have a baby by a white man.

In the eyes of Cleaver, Rufus Scott of Another Country is a failure to his race because he fails to act as "the referent for masculinity, sexuality, and raciality" (Dunning 104).

(p. 134)With his privilege as a white man, Vivaldo is able to step back and see homosexual sex for what it is, which is an act of vulnerability and trust, rather than dominance and submission as seen through the eyes of Rufus.

[12][2]: 241 The book was designated "obscene" in New Orleans and banned due to including descriptions of LGBT love and sex, drawing the attention of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

Yes, Rufus was a psychological freedom rider, turning the ultimate cheek, murmuring like a ghost "You took the best so why not take the rest", which has absolutely nothing to do with the way that Negroes have managed to survive here in the hells of North America!The book was listed by Anthony Burgess as one of his Ninety-nine Novels: The best in English since 1939.

I am not an intellectual, not in the dreary sense that word is used today, and do not want to be: I am aiming at what Henry James called 'perception at the pitch of passion.'

Asked to cite literary influences, Baldwin said that Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and George Bernard Shaw were his "models.

[3] The book has been described as an implicit criticism of Mailer's The White Negro and its passive romanticization of black culture.

Gordon writes: "Contrary to Vivaldo's expectations, emulating the African American's hypermasculine sexual ethos does not ultimately enable him to fulfill the hipster's fantasy of embodied identification."

[21] One author felt the title echoes lines in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta:[22] Thou hast committed— Fornication: but that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead.