A Gathering of Old Men

Ernest J. Gaines

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jun 30, 1992 - Fiction - 224 pages

A powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man--set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s.

The Village Voice called A Gathering of Old Men “the best-written novel on Southern race relations in over a decade.”

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Gathering of Old Men; Vintage Contemporaries
• Author: Ernest J. Gaines
• Edition: reprint, reissue
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1992
• ISBN: 0679738908, 9780679738909
• Length: 224 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / African American & Black / Historical; Fiction / Crime; Fiction / Historical / General