ENG - Special issue of 813 dedicated to Chester Himes

The latest issue of 813 (N° 122) is a special issue devoted to Chester Himes and coordinated by Bernard Daguerre. It includes, next to a presentation of Himes and his first novels by James Sallis, his biographer, and to several tribute texts (Montalban, Christiane Rochefort, Claude Mesplède) and fictions inspired by Himes (Jake Lamar and Marc Villard) several new studies. "The end of the Free State of Harlem" is devoted to the last two novels, Blind Man With a Pistol and Plan B (Sylvie Escande). "Gravedigger and Coffin Ed in French: translations worth burying" is a thorough survey by Pierre Bondil on Himes’ translations in the Série Noire (Gallimard). In "The Apocalypse according to Chester ..." Xavier Dazerat considers Himes’ last novel, Plan B, as the inevitable culmination of all his previous works and focuses on the forms that politics take in the novel. In "The chains of secrecy", Ruth Fialho, shows that the white predator’s perverse secrets in The Real Cool Killers are open secrets, which testify about the disintegration of the black community and the abandonment of its women. "A garden without flowers" is an investigation of François Darnaudet about the mysterious novel co-written by Himes and Willa, the woman he met on the ship that brought him to France in 1953.

Other articles tell the incredible story of Himes’ cabin-trunk, perhaps more founded than that of his typewriter as told by Dany Laferrière, and examine the successful adaptations of two of Himes' novels in comics (Frédéric Prilleux). A detailed inventory of the controversial adaptations of his novels to the screen (François Guérif and Jeanne Guyon) can also be found.

This issue of 813 has achieved its objective and improves the knowledge of Himes and his work. It even opens up new avenues and fosters debate and new questions.

813 draws its title from a novel by Maurice Leblanc (1910) featuring Arsène Lupin.