The Lowlife (Faber Editions) - by Alexander Baron (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

"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.

A celebrated cult classic, The Lowlife brilliantly evokes post-war East London - dog tracks, sandwich shops, tenements, sex workers, newly arrived West Indians and Jews leaving for Finchley - all seen through the tragicomic eyes of Harryboy, our picaresque rogue hero suffering from 'existential burn-out in the shadow of the Holocaust' (Iain Sinclair) and driven to bet, brag and beg to survive.

"Terrific." - Sebastian Faulks

Review Quotes

"Terrific. Propulsive, funny and touching. It moves as fast as the dog in trap 1 at Harringay." - Sebastian Faulks

"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

"A subcultural classic." - Jon Savage

"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

"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