Chester Himes

Chester Himes was born in 1909 in Jefferson City, Missouri, the son of two teachers. His brother was blinded in a chemistry demonstration in which he was supposed to take part, and later fell down an elevator shaft. Sentenced at nineteen to twenty to twenty-five years of hard labour for armed robbery, he began writing in prison, published in magazines from 1934 and was released in 1936. Settled in France in 1953, he wrote, at the request of Marcel Duhamel, for the Série noire, a cycle of Harlem detective novels that would make him famous. He died in Spain, at Moraira, in 1984.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelIf He Hollers Let Him GoChester Himes · 1945Literature