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A Case of Rape

A Novel

Author Chester Himes

Paperback

$17.00 US

Knopf | Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

5.16"W x 7.95"H x 0.42"D | 5 oz | 24 per carton

On sale Oct 08, 2024 | 144 Pages | 9780593686744

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From the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series, a brilliant, short novel about a tragic death and a wrongful conviction

Spare and powerful, A Case of Rape chronicles a tragic miscarriage of justice. Mrs. Elizabeth Hancock Brissard, a white woman, has died in Paris under mysterious circumstances. She had overdosed on an aphrodisiac, and there was evidence she had been sexually assaulted. A French couple witnessed four black men attempting to push her out a window before she died. The trial that followed was summary, and its verdict convicting the four men of rape was practically a foregone conclusion. But was it true? A riveting mystery but also a mordant critique of racism and sexism, and featuring an introduction by Calvin C. Hernton, A Case of Rape is the fablelike story of doomed love and justice.

Chester (Bomar) Himes began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 - 1936. His account of the horrific 1930 Penitentiary fire that killed over three hundred men appeared in Esquire in 1932 and from this Himes was able to get other work published. From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. Beginning in 1953, Himes moved to Europe, where he lived as an expatriate in France and Spain. There, he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels---including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and Run Man Run (1966)---featuring two Harlem policemen Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. As with Himes's earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor. View titles by Chester Himes

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Praise for Chester Himes's A Case of Rape

“A scathing indictment of prejudice. . . . A moving evocation of an impossible love.” —Paris Match

“Himes explores the lives of his five characters, revealing just how deceiving appearances can be when the observer’s vision is clouded by racist assumptions.” —Los Angeles Times

“[Himes] writes with a ruthless honesty, which cannot fail to impress.” —The Guardian

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