A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes

A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes

'The greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler' Sunday Times

Jackson's woman has found him a foolproof way to make money - a technique for turning ten dollar bills into hundreds. But when the scheme somehow fails, Jackson is left broke, wanted by the police and desperately racing to get back both his money and his loving Imabelle.

The first of Chester Himes's novels featuring the hardboiled Harlem detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, A Rage in Harlem has swagger, brutal humour, lurid violence, a hearse loaded with gold and a conman dressed as a Sister of Mercy.

With an Introduction by Luc Sante

Outrageous, shocking, wonderful * New York Times Book Review *
Himes wrote spectacularly successful entertainments, filled with gems of descriptive writing, plots that barely sidestep chaos, characters surreal, grotesque, comic, hip, Harlem recollected as a place that can make you laugh, cry, shudder
Chester Himes is one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition. His command of nuances of character and dynamics of plot is preeminent among writers of crime fiction. He is a master craftsman.
A fantasia with a hard brilliant core * Evening Standard *
A fine crime writer of Chandlerian subtlety though in a vein of sheer toughness very much his own * The Times *
Chester Himes is the great lost crime writer, as well a great American dissident novelist per se, and an essential witness to his times. Every one of his beyond-cool Harlem novels is cherished by every reader who finds it.
Hieronymus Bosch meets Miles Davis * The New York Times *
He belongs with those great demented realists ... whose writing pitilessly exposes the ridiculousness of the human condition
That he could channel this pain and misery into some of the greatest crime novels ever written is a testament to his skill as a writer and his spirit as a man. If this is the first Chester Himes novel you will read then, believe me, you are in for a treat.

Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1909 and grew up in Cleveland. Aged 19 he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 25 years in jail. In jail he began to write short stories, some of which were published in Esquire magazine. Upon release he took a variety of jobs, from working in a California shipyard to journalism to script-writing, while continuing to write fiction. He later moved to Paris where he was commissioned to write the first of his Harlem detective novels, A Rage in Harlem, which won the 1957 Grand Prix du Roman Policier. In 1969 Himes moved to Spain, where he died in 1984.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780241521083
ISBN 10	0241521084
Title	A Rage in Harlem
Author	Chester Himes
Series	Penguin Modern Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	2021-03-25
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.