Thrill-seeking teenager Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery in the state penitentiary, where terror and chaos reign, corrupt guards inflict casual violence, and men try to preserve their dignity amid isolation and inhumanity. When a fire breaks out, setting hell and mayhem loose, it seems Jimmy’s entire world is unravelling. But as he develops a tender relationship with fellow convict Rico, hope begins to glimmer, and, through his eventual foray into writing, something resembling redemption. Originally published in 1952, in an expurgated version, as Cast the First Stone, Yesterday Will Make You Cry draws on Chester Himes’s own youthful experiences of imprisonment to face down the scouring truths of harm and love.

‘Himes at the top of his game … what an amazing book it is’ Melvin Van Peebles