Allen & Unwin A Lesson Before Dying book Fiction English Paperback 272 pages

Award-winning classic novel of prejudice, community and what it means to be a man in the American South.

In a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, a young black man named Jefferson witnesses a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed. The only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death.Gaines explores the deep prejudice of the American South in the tradition of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and Toni Morrison's Beloved. A Lesson Before Dying is a richly compassionate and deeply moving novel, the story of a young black man sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, and a teacher who hopes to ease his burden before the execution.

Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933 on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. His novels include The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Of Love and Dust, Catherine Carmier, Bloodline, A Gathering of Old Men and In My Father's House.