A Lesson Before Dying is Ernest J. Gaines’ eighth novel succeeding a decade after A Gathering of Old Men, published in 1993. His fictional work that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award, is based on the true story of Willie Francis, a young black American man best known for surviving a failed execution by a malfunctioned electrocution in the state of Louisiana, during 1945 and 1947.
Source:Wikipedia
