Baldwin started writing Another Country in Greenwich Village in 1948 and continued to write the novel in Paris and again in New York. Despite his privately confessed reluctance to bring "Another Country, unfinished, into yet another country," Baldwin completed the book in Istanbul in 1962.[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.[2]: 157
Baldwin had returned to the United States in 1957, partly to cover the mounting Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. Baldwin admired King, but sought to depict relationships deeper than King's "brotherly love."[3]
