All God's Chillun Got Pride
By (Author) Chester Himes
Penguin Books Ltd
Penguin Classics
15th July 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Novella (Short Novel)
Paperback
160
Width 111mm, Height 181mm, Spine 15mm
150g
90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Best known for his hardboiled Harlem Detective series, Chester Himes was also a superb literary writer, beginning his creative life by writing short stories in the 1930s while serving jail time for armed robbery. Selected here are some of his best stories - from a satirical tale about a student bet that purportedly disproves the existence of racism in Los Angeles to a chilling drama in which a snake invades a family home.
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.