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.
