Description:
One man gambles on the dogs and his own life in this rediscovered Jewish post-war classic of London's seedy underbelly, introduced by Iain Sinclair.
"A novel and author richly deserving of renewed attention."--Kirkus starred review ⭐
Never give up hope before the dogs have crossed the finishing-line.
Harryboy Boas is a lowlife gambler. When he's not at the track, he lives in a Hackney boarding house, reading Zola, eating salt beef, pressing trousers and repressing wartime memories. But when a new family moves into the apartment downstairs, his life starts to unravel and Harryboy soon finds himself sinking into a murky East End underworld where violence, guilt and gangsters are the inevitable result for those who cannot pay their dues.
Brief description: Iain Sinclair has lived in Hackney since 1968. He is the award-winning author of numerous critically acclaimed books about London, including The Last London, Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire and London Overground. He won the Encore Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Downriver.
Review Quotes:
"In this lost 1963 British classic set in postwar London, a Jewish inveterate gambler's involvement with the troubled family that moves in downstairs awakens painful losses from his past.... Coming from a writer as relaxed and lightly satirical as Baron, Harry's reckoning with memories he has spent his life avoiding couldn't be more powerful. A novel and author richly deserving of renewed attention." --Kirkus starred review ⭐
"Terrific. Propulsive, funny and touching. It moves as fast as the dog in trap 1 at Harringay." --Sebastian Faulks, author of Devil May Care
"A wonderfully enduring novel about seedy post-war English criminal life. Rich characterisation underpinned by a wholly authentic and compelling voice. A great re-discovery." --William Boyd, author of Gabriel's Moon
"A subcultural classic."--Jon Savage, author of This Searing Light, the Sun, and Everything Else
"The most perfectly proportioned London novel, capturing the grind of scheming, dreaming, struggle - and, of course, the city in all its grime and glory." --Benjamin Myers, author of The Gallows Pole
"The wonder of The Lowlife is that it does justice to a place of so many contradictions ... One of the best fictions, the truest accounts of [Hackney]"--Iain Sinclair
"A beautifully observed, understated study of an East End Jewish gambler...something of an underground cult."--John L. Williams, Guardian
"A visceral rendering of a city on the cusp between the Ration Book Fifties and the Swinging Sixties." --Cathi Unsworth
"A short-odds favourite for the finest British novel about addiction."--Paul Willetts
"Emile Zola meets Patrick Hamilton in one of the great post-war London novels, a seedy but soulful study of bruised characters struggling to survive on the fringes of convention."--Peter Watts
"A reflective gem of London literature." --John King
"As a vivid depiction of a long-gone London that's still strangely familiar, The Lowlife is an essential novel of the city, its power undiminished."--Gary Budden
"Exquisitely depicting the changing face of post-war Britain, The Lowlife is a highly moving book, which, like Harryboy Boas, is also often very funny and never entirely without hope." --Lee Stuart Evans, author of Pleasantly Disturbed
"A fascinating snapshot of a lost London world, by a remarkable, unjustly neglected writer." --Sarah Waters