The End of a Primitive

Two lives spiral into a fatal pas de deux during a weekend of sex, alcohol and violence--from the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series

Jesse Robinson and Kriss Cummings once shared a passionate weekend in Chicago, but it's been years since they've seen each other. Jesse, a black writer, refuses to pen the inspirational novel his agent wants, and sits in his Harlem tenement as his career plummets accordingly. Kriss, a white divorc?e, has found moderate success at her office job, but is disillusioned with life. Often sleeping with black men, she's pilloried for "solving the Negro Problem in bed." Each of them lonely and embittered by the racial tensions of McCarthy-era America, they reunite for a whiskey-soaked weekend in 1952, spiraling into a violent, malicious pas de deux that is fated to end in destruction.

Author: Chester Himes
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 10/08/2024
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780593686706
ISBN10: 0593686705
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | African American & Black | General
- Fiction | Noir
- Fiction | Literary

About the Author
Chester Himes began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 to 1936. 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 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)--featuring two Harlem policemen. As with Himes's earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor. He died in Spain in 1984.