Yesterday Will Make You Cry

· Random House
eBook
400
Pages
Eligible
This book will become available on 20 February 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.

About this eBook

'A stark depiction of the “alligator pond” of prison life ... Rage tempered with compassion ... [its] emotional core continues to smoulder’ The New York Times Book Review

Thrill-seeking teenager Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery in the state penitentiary, where terror and chaos reign, corrupt guards inflict casual violence, and men try to preserve their dignity amid isolation and inhumanity. When a fire breaks out, setting hell and mayhem loose, it seems Jimmy’s entire world is unravelling. But as he develops a tender relationship with fellow convict Rico, hope begins to glimmer, and, through his eventual foray into writing, something resembling redemption. Originally published in 1952, in an expurgated version, as Cast the First Stone, Yesterday Will Make You Cry draws on Chester Himes’s own youthful experiences of imprisonment to face down the scouring truths of harm and love.

‘Himes at the top of his game ... what an amazing book it is’ Melvin Van Peebles

About the author

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 littérature policière. In 1969 Himes moved to Spain, where he died in 1984.

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