Overview

A masterful novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite it, by the author of the acclaimed Harlem Detective series Thrill-seeking white teenager Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery. The penitentiary is a place where terror and chaos reign, where corrupt guards inflict casual and insidious violence, where men isolated from the outside world must preserve their dignity and find fulfilment through years of boredom and uncertainty. When a fire breaks out, setting hell and mayhem loose, it seems as though Jimmy's entire world is unravelling. But, in the aftermath, as he develops a tender relationship with fellow convict Rico, hope begins to glimmer, and his eventual foray into writing channels the confusion of his experience into something finally resembling redemption. Originally published in 1952, in an expurgated version, as Cast the First Stone, this unsparing, intense yet affirming novel draws on Chester Himes' own life - including his youthful imprisonment, his path to writing and his experience of the devastating Ohio Penitentiary fire in 1930. Yesterday Will Make You Cry faces down the scouring truths of harm and love, and demonstrates the astonishing lyric range of Himes' prose.

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9780241692646

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Chester Himes was born in Missouri in 1909. Aged nineteen he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to twenty-five years in jail, where he began to write short stories. Upon release, he took a variety of jobs while continuing to write fiction. He later moved to Paris where he wrote the first of his Harlem detective novels, A Rage in Harlem, which won the 1957 Grand prix de litterature polici re. In 1969 Himes moved to Spain, where he died in 1984.

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