Cotton Comes to Harlem Paperback - 1988

About this book

From the jacket flap

Black flim-flam man Deke O'Hara is no sooner out of Atlanta's state penitentiary than he's back on the streets working the scam of a lifetime. As sponsor of the Back-to-Africa movement he's counting on the big Harlem rally to produce a big collection--for his own private charity. But the take ($87,000) is hijacked by white gunmen and hidden in a bale of cotton that suddenly everyone wants to get his hands on. With Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones on everyone's trail and piecing together the complexity of the scheme, Cotton Comes to Harlem is one of Himes's hardest-hitting and most entertaining thrillers.

First Edition Identification

Cotton Comes to Harlem was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 1965, with ‘First American edition 1965’ on copyright page. The original US dust jacket has a $4.50 price point. This novel was originally published in France under the title Retour in Afrique (Back to Africa) in 1964 by Librairie Plon. -

Media reviews

“Chester Himes is the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler.”
    —San Francisco Chronicle

“One of the most important American writers of the 20th century. . . . A quirky American genius.”
    —Walter Mosley

“Chester Himes is one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition. . . . A master craftsman.”
    —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
 
“Every one of his beyond-cool Harlem novels is cherished by every reader who finds it.”
    —Jonathan Lethem

Citations

• Newsweek, 07/13/2009, Page 49