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Book Cover for: A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines

A Lesson Before Dying

Ernest J. Gaines

Reader Score

79%

79% of readers

recommend this book

Winner:National Book Critics Circle Award -Fiction (1993)
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From the author of "A Gathering of Old Men" and "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Vintage
  • Publish Date: Sep 28th, 1997
  • Pages: 272
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.90in - 5.20in - 0.70in - 0.45lb
  • EAN: 9780375702709
  • Categories: • Literary• African American & Black - Historical• Family Life - General

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About the Author

ERNEST GAINES was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupée Parish near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. He is writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1993 Gaines received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his lifetime achievements. In 1996 he was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France's highest decorations. He and his wife, Dianne, live in Oscar, Louisiana.

More books by Ernest J. Gaines

Book Cover for: A Gathering of Old Men, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: Ernest J. Gaines: Four Novels (Loa #383): The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman / In My Father's House / A Gathering of Old Men / A Lesson Before Dyi, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: Of Love and Dust, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: In My Father's House, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: Bloodline: Five Stories, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: The Tragedy of Brady Sims, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: Catherine Carmier, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines
Book Cover for: A Long Day in November, Ernest J. Gaines

Praise for this book

"This majestic, moving novel is an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives." --Chicago Tribune

"A Lesson Before Dying reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position as an important American writer." --Boston Globe

"Enormously moving. . . . Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes." --Los Angeles Times

"A quietly moving novel [that] takes us back to a place we've been before to impart a lesson for living." --San Francisco Chronicle