<div>A madcap, bawdy tale about an ordinary man who goes to work for a racketeer and has the adventure of a lifetime: the last novel by an iconic British writer. Michael Cullen, from Nottingham, has a shady past, but nearing his forties, he&rsquo;s settled down, married a doctor, and started working for an ad agency. That is, until the agency fires him. He&rsquo;s not terribly upset though. Actually, he feels free&mdash;he hated that job. But he knows he&rsquo;s disappointed his wife and isn&rsquo;t sure what to do next, so he decides to hit the road for a few weeks. Then, he&rsquo;s contacted by his old boss, Claude Moggerhanger. A racketeer whom Cullen once tried&mdash;and failed&mdash;to put in jail, Moggerhanger seems to have forgiven him, and wants to hire him to do a little &ldquo;job.&rdquo; All he has to do is drive Moggerhanger&rsquo;s Rolls Royce to Greece, get Greek food for Moggerhanger&rsquo;s wife, collect a few packages, and deliver one in Belgrade. This sounds pretty suspect to Cullen, but he needs the money and has nothing else to do&mdash;plus, Moggerhanger can be very persuasive. It&rsquo;s only the beginning of a wild adventure with a cast of characters featuring Cullen&rsquo;s father, who&rsquo;s a famous writer, and his long-suffering girlfriend; crazed poets; endless women; rat catchers; Labrador retrievers; the highly menacing Green Toe Gang; and his old friend, Bill Straw, a former mercenary soldier. This novel will make you want to quit your job and go on the road, come what may. Moggerhanger is the 3rd book in the Michael Cullen Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. </div>

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Moggerhanger

<div>Nine classic short stories portraying the isolation, criminality, morality, and rebellion of the working class from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe The titular story follows the internal decisions and external oppressions of a seventeen-year-old inmate in a juvenile detention center who is known only by his surname, Smith. The wardens have given the boy a light workload because he shows talent as a runner. But if he wins the national long-distance running competition as everyone is counting on him to do, Smith will only vindicate the very system and society that has locked him up. &ldquo;The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner&rdquo; has long been considered a masterpiece on both the page and the silver screen. Adapted for film by Sillitoe himself in 1962, it became an instant classic of British New Wave cinema. In &ldquo;Uncle Ernest,&rdquo; a middle-aged furniture upholsterer traumatized in World War II, now leads a lonely life. His wife has left him, his brothers have moved away, and the townsfolk treat him as if he were a ghost. When the old man finally finds companionship with two young girls whom he enjoys buying pastries for at a caf&eacute;, the local authorities find his behavior morally suspect. &ldquo;Mr. Raynor the School Teacher&rdquo; delves into a different kind of isolation&mdash;that of a voyeuristic teacher who fantasizes constantly about the women who work in a draper&rsquo;s shop across the street. When his students distract him from his lustful daydreams, Mr. Raynor becomes violent. The six stories that follow in this iconic collection continue to cement Alan Sillitoe&rsquo;s reputation as one of Britain&rsquo;s foremost storytellers, and a champion of the condemned, the oppressed, and the overlooked. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

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The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

<div>Alan Sillitoe&rsquo;s bestselling debut novel about debauchery, infidelity . . . and the morning after Arthur Seaton, a ladies&rsquo; man and factory-worker extraordinaire, has just downed seven gins and eleven pints at his local pub. Thoroughly smashed, he proceeds to tumble down an entire flight of stairs, pass out, and wake up again only to vomit on a middle-aged couple. Luckily Arthur&rsquo;s lover, Brenda&mdash;a married woman with two kids&mdash;lets Arthur escape to her bed. Such are Saturdays in this bachelor&rsquo;s life. When Arthur is not romancing Brenda, evading her husband, or drinking himself silly, he is turning up his nose at authority, disparaging the army, and trying to avoid paying too much income tax. Moreover, Arthur&rsquo;s rapscallion ways soon lead him into the bed of Brenda&rsquo;s younger sister&mdash;who is also married. But no matter how much fun there is to be had, every Saturday night has its Sunday morning, replete with hangovers and consequences: A local bigmouth starts gossiping about Arthur&rsquo;s affairs, Brenda gets pregnant, the husbands find out what&rsquo;s been going on, and Arthur suffers a terrible beating. Perhaps the time has come for this playboy to settle down and marry that third woman he has been seeing on the side . . . One of the first books to sell over a million copies in the UK when it was released in paperback, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning has since become a key literary reference of postwar British culture and society, as well as a classic British New Wave film. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

<div>A sociopolitical misadventure from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner Frank Dawley is a working-class escapee. After twelve years of spiritual nullification at a factory in Nottingham, five years in an alienating marriage, and two burdensome kids, Frank is finally free. He has quit his job, burned his possessions, and sold his car, and is hitching a ride to wherever the road will take him. Haunting Frank&rsquo;s physical and existential travels is a ubiquitous inscription painted on nearly every street corner in England: BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Who is this Bill Posters, who is so relentlessly hounded by the authorities? To Frank, Bill&mdash;or William&mdash;becomes a symbol of the servile proletariat, the &ldquo;put-upon dreg&rdquo; whose hollow ideologies have bombarded Frank throughout his entire life. As an act of resistance, Frank becomes determined to reject&mdash;even to kill&mdash;the William Posters that lives inside of him. Ribald misadventures ensue as Frank finds his way from England to Spain to Morocco to Algeria&mdash;and into the beds of several married women. En route, he meets a revolutionary American who ends up engaging him in a high-stakes gunrunning mission. The first volume in an epic trilogy, The Death of William Posters sends Frank headfirst into the truth of what he&rsquo;s been running away from all along. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

The Death of William Posters

<div>The second novel in award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe&rsquo;s William Posters Trilogyis an existential investigation of protest and revolution in 1960s North Africa and England Jewish dilettante Myra Bassingfield returns to England from Gibraltar with her four-week-old son. Frank Dawley, the child&rsquo;s father and the anarchist antihero of The Death of William Posters, has disappeared into the African desert, where he is fighting with the FLN (Front de Lib&eacute;ration Nationale) for Algerian independence against French troops. Greeting Myra quayside as she disembarks from the ship is Frank&rsquo;s friend, Albert Handley, an idealistic painter living in a chaotic house in Linconshire with seven kids, a bulldog, six cats, and two au pair girls. Albert&rsquo;s brother, John, is determined to break from the family and he sets off for Algeria to track Frank down&mdash;but not before burning the Handley house to the ground. The Handley brood must then move in with Myra in Buckinghamshire, and by the time Frank finally shows up, they have formed a domestic cell of protest that may just plant the seeds of a new English revolution. From ramshackle life in a commune to undercover gunrunning, this is Alan Sillitoe, author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, at his humorous and literary best. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

A Tree on Fire

<div>A portrait of individual and communal struggles to maintain authenticity and revolutionary fervor in 1960s England from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe The final installment of the William Posters Trilogy revolves around the plights and foibles of the Handley family commune, which set up camp at the home of the wealthy Myra Bassingfield. There, painter Albert Handley is pursuing a whirlwind existence of art, sex, and chaotic domestic life. Of his seven children, four are giving him particular grief. His eldest son, Cuthbert, has been kicked out of theological college; his eldest daughter, Mandy, is pregnant by her unstable husband; and two of his younger sons, Richard and Adam, are pillaging army manuals for subversive and revolutionary ends. To top it all off, Myra&rsquo;s lover, Frank Dawley, has returned from gunrunning in Algeria&mdash;and brought along his wife and two kids from Nottingham to live in the Buckinghamshire kibbutz. Collective cohabitation soon reveals its downfalls. And when a young Spanish anarchist arrives with assassination on her mind, her trunk full of notebooks may condemn Frank for a sin committed in the African desert. As the community hangs by a thread, the very notion of revolution comes under scrutiny, begging the question: Can the fire of life burn, even when its flame is no longer in sight? This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

The Flame of Life

<div>The long-anticipated sequel to Alan Sillitoe&rsquo;s bestselling classic 1950s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Arthur and Brian Seaton are heading back to their hometown, Nottingham, some forty-odd years after the close of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. The brothers plan to surprise Brian&rsquo;s first love, Jenny Tuxford, on her seventieth birthday. Arthur, the notorious lothario, still has some of his old spark, but it has been hampered by domestic life and his wife&rsquo;s recent cancer diagnosis. Meanwhile, Brian, now a failed novelist but successful television writer living in London, is struggling with dissatisfaction and emotional regrets. He and Jenny had fooled around in their teenage years&mdash;a lot of heavy petting through complicated clothing on her parents&rsquo; settee&mdash;but Jenny ended up marrying someone else. Now that Jenny&rsquo;s husband has passed away, will sparks fly between her and Brian again? It is clear that the Nottingham of their youth no longer exists. The trams are now buses; the collieries and ironmongers have been replaced by cell phone shops and halal grocers; new high-rise apartments have sprung up; and the idle young hang around the city pubs whining about the dole. Where Saturday Night and Sunday Morning portrayed the chaotic energy of youth, Birthday is an investigation of the other end of the spectrum: the contemplation of missed chances and terminal decline, and the awareness that &ldquo;death&rsquo;s blackout could descend at any minute.&rdquo; This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

Birthday

<div>An existential saga of working-class life in a British factory town and military service in the torrid jungles of the Far East from award-winning, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe Key to the Door turns away from the boisterous pursuits of Arthur Seaton made infamous in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and focuses instead on the quieter rebellions of his older brother, Brian. Brian&rsquo;s childhood and adolescence in the grimy streets of Nottingham are shaped by the Depression-era struggles of his family, the life and culture of the factory town, and the love and bullying of his iron-willed grandfather and erratic father. When Brian reaches adulthood, he frequents the local pubs, works hard at a cardboard factory, and runs into a sticky situation with a woman named Pauline that obliges him to marry her. Soon though, he is conscripted for the postwar occupation of Malaya, and his true colors begin to show. Brian declares that he only wears his uniform to collect his paycheck; he shows contempt for the soldiers who obey the rules; he pursues a relationship with an exotic Chinese dancer; and he sends poetry into the jungle in Morse code. At once a vivid family portrait and a study of &ldquo;the desolate, companionless void of protest&rdquo; prevalent in postwar England, Key to the Door establishes the Seaton Novels as a broad and sweeping saga of twentieth-century British life, set against the backdrop of Nottingham. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author&rsquo;s estate. </div>

Key to the Door

<div>From one of Britain&rsquo;s leading writers comes a biting satire about a country founded on Nihilism and a government gone mad Nihilon is a country where honesty is outlawed, drunk driving is mandatory, and nihilism reigns supreme. Five researchers are sent into the midst of this chaos to compile a new guidebook about the peculiar, unexplored land and its all-powerful leader, President Nil. Adam, Benjamin, Jaquiline, Edgar, and Richard attempt to gather information&mdash;but find themselves swept up by a nation turned upside down. As they navigate their way to the capital through artificial mist created by President Nil to disorient his people, the writers are stopped by ordinary citizens whom they quickly discover cannot be trusted. Adam accidentally starts a ground war, Benjamin is forced to buy a car, and Jaquiline discovers that robbery is not only legal, but encouraged. The researchers, who arrived as tourists, will find that although it is easy to enter Nihilon, it is much, much harder to escape. Alan Sillitoe, the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, crosses into uncharted territory in this comic dystopia that is as smart as it is engrossing. </div>

Travels in Nihilon

<div>Raised by a career soldier, a working class Englishman tries to find his place&mdash;both in and out of uniform&mdash;in this compelling novel of love and war Charlie Scorton sees his best friend killed beside him in the mine, and resolves to join the army. His father throws him out for deserting the coal miner&rsquo;s life, but Charlie never looks back. For twenty-four years, he roams the empire, a king&rsquo;s soldier who is finally left with no choice but to come home. He has a child, his wife dies, and the old soldier dedicates himself to raising his boy. Charlie trains his son, William, to be an artilleryman from birth. William finds a home in the army, the sort he has always longed for, and makes his mark during World War II, performing heroically during the retreat at Dunkirk, risking his life to save thousands. But soon, he will be forced to answer the question his father never could: What does a soldier do when war is over? Alan Sillitoe, the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, examines where the fight ends and life begins for a soldier in this story of love and war, and the blurred lines between them. </div>

The Widower's Son

<div>A story of love and romance between two lost people in 1950s Britain, from the author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner Every morning Pam decides to leave George. Somehow she never quite gets around to it. She&rsquo;s flirted with suicide too, but she doesn&rsquo;t see the point. A woman would have to be mad to kill herself for the sake of George. He&rsquo;s a brute, vain and selfish, with a cruel sense of humor and absolutely no regard for his wife. Someday she will leave him: Why not today? Pam flees to London, where she takes refuge in a lonely, sparsely furnished room. With a twist of her wrist, she turns on the gas and resigns herself to death, only to be rescued by a neighbor. Tom, a former sailor in the Merchant Navy who has just come into a surprise inheritance, is carrying scars of his own. Bound by despair, these two unlikely lovers begin a new life, and together they will find a reason to live This lonely middle-aged couple finds victory in living, searching for love and happiness, and overcoming their pasts. In its portrayal of women, Her Victory has been compared to the novels of Doris Lessing and Margaret Drabble, and it is award-winning author Alan Sillitoe at his very best. </div>

Her Victory

<div>A post-WWII adventure from the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. A top-secret mission sends a crew of Royal Air Force veterans from South Africa to the subarctic Kerguelen Islands in this suspense-packed tale of lawlessness, piracy, obsession, and greed. At the helm of the Aldebaran, a huge flying boat, sits the monomaniacal Captain Bennett, a man hell-bent on unearthing a treasure buried by the Germans in the final days of World War II. And on the seaplane&rsquo;s radio is the young wireless operator Adcock, a man who listens to everything and tries to make sense of it all. The rest of the ex-soldiers on board seek either riches or adventure&mdash;but all are fleeing the frustrations and disappointments of their postwar lives. As the voyage takes dangerous turns toward natural and manmade threats, it becomes clear that Captain Bennett is keeping secrets and the Aldebaran is not alone on her quest. Adcock&rsquo;s morals are soon put to the test, machine guns are mounted on the flying boat&rsquo;s turrets, and the thirst for gold may cost the crew their lives. Classic kitchen sink realism meets high-flying adventure in this British thriller that goes beyond action and into the depths of human values and motivations in a war-damaged world. Drawing upon Alan Sillitoe&rsquo;s own wartime experiences as a wireless operator, The Lost Flying Boat is full of aerial heroics, coded messages, shattered dreams, and the will to persevere. </div>

The Lost Flying Boat

<div>A suspense novel of drugs, love, cyphers, and sailors from the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. A blind Royal Air Force veteran becomes entangled in a high-seas heroin heist in this gripping adventure from one of Britain&rsquo;s most renowned postwar writers. Though Howard cannot see, he is able to view the world through the radio waves, eavesdropping on global affairs and secret transmissions with his mastery of Morse code. But when Howard becomes obsessed with the voice of a female sailor and her mysterious communications with her lover, his own relationship begins to dissolve. Howard&rsquo;s doting wife, Laura, tries to bring her husband back to their provincial reality by introducing him to Richard, a fellow code-breaking buff. However, the attempt to solve their marital problems backfires when Richard&rsquo;s dealings in the black market send the female sailor on a dangerous drug run and Howard sets off on a madcap mission to save her. From British working-class life to intercepted Interpol reports, bestselling author Alan Sillitoe takes readers on a suspenseful ride into a sea of crime and corruption, love and heroism&mdash;one that is masterfully punctuated with dots and dashes. </div>

The German Numbers Woman

<div>A working-class family saga set in rural England from the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. In 1887, Ernest Burton is a robust twenty-one-year-old who sets off to Wales in his best suit in order to work at his brother&rsquo;s forge. En route, he meets, seduces, and promptly impregnates a young widow. Such is the first episode of what turns into a lifetime of compulsive philandering whenever the blacksmith has a few hours away from his job. Within a year, Burton abandons the widow and returns to Nottingham. There, he marries the village barmaid, continues to toil and excel in a smithy, and fathers eight more children. Though Burton is an able-bodied provider who can ring a bull and shoe a horse with the best of them, his constant adultery, harsh authoritarianism, and violent streaks, make him anything but an ideal family man. The Burton children grow up to be rebellious despite&mdash;or to spite&mdash;their father&rsquo;s iron fist. And as time goes on, Burton seems more and more at odds with British society at large. Modernity threatens his profession, independent living is replaced by the welfare state, and long-standing customs of patriarchy give way to a more inclusive democracy. Two world wars and the Depression inflict additional tragedy on the family. As the Burtons struggle to overcome their strife, will the bully father have a change of heart? In this absorbing historical portrait set in Nottinghamshire, a charismatic yet despotic blacksmith reigns over his wife and children, but is powerless to control the transformations of early twentieth-century Britain. </div>

A Man of His Time

<div>This postwar British coming-of-age novel questions the foundations of society and self. Class and identity are lifelong struggles for Herbert Thurgarton-Strang, who was born in India but sent away at age seven to a boarding school in England. As an adolescent, Herbert loathes British weather and boxing&mdash;despite his penchant for camping and his brutality in the ring&mdash;and his only solace is imagining a violent revenge on his parents for &ldquo;abandoning&rdquo; him. As Herbert grows into an angry teen and World War II breaks out, he channels his rage into a passion for the Army Cadet Force. Then a book about escaped prisoners of war falls into his lap, and Herbert begins to daydream about running away. At the age of seventeen, the rebellious young man finally breaks free from school and heads straight into the industrial slums of Nottingham. There, Herbert discards his upper-class accent and reinvents himself as &ldquo;Bert Gedling&rdquo;&mdash;a working-class lathe man, a drinker, a womanizer, and eventually a soldier. During his tour of duty, Bert continues to adapt his character to the world around him, and when he returns to England he transforms once again&mdash;but this time the fictions he constructs will follow the truth of his heart. From the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, The Broken Chariot explores work, class, life, and love in postwar England. </div>

The Broken Chariot

<div>A gripping thriller set among Britain&rsquo;s snowy peaks from the bestselling author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Suspense, secrets, conspiracy, and entrapment come to a head in this dark allegory of the modern postwar condition. Snowbound in the remote White Cavalier Hotel in the mountains of England&rsquo;s Lake District, a motley mix of strangers think they have found refuge, but instead discover a violent drama that is ready to explode. Among the mysterious guests imprisoned by the blizzard are a murderous BMW driver, a female hitchhiker, an anxious bookseller-forger, illicit lovers, aging Hells Angels bikers, a hostage of marriage, a loathsome father and son, and an IRA terrorist with a bomb-laden van. Everyone has brought along their personal baggage of guilt for crimes they have committed against society, and as they uncover one another&rsquo;s secrets and unwind a conspiracy, they must also face their own selves. Taking kitchen sink realism into the depths of winter and the infernal mind of a terrorist, acclaimed British novelist and &ldquo;angry young man&rdquo; Alan Sillitoe creates a poignant existential investigation with a chilling twist. </div>

Snowstop

<div>This fusion of novel and memoir from a bestselling British author chronicles the destructive effects of WWI on two working-class families in Nottingham. An advocate for ordinary people, Alan Sillitoe combines family memoir with exhaustive research on military records, and fuses them with artistic speculation in this inventive and political historical novel. Central to the story are the author&rsquo;s grandfather, the blacksmith Ernest Burton, and his uncle Edgar, a World War I deserter. The launching point for this narrative family album is a legless match-seller from Sillitoe&rsquo;s childhood who &ldquo;walked&rdquo; on the streets of Nottingham with his hands. When the young Sillitoe asked his family about the reasons behind this man&rsquo;s deformity, he heard a series of different accounts: His mother said it was a train accident, his father claimed it was an explosion during the Battle of the Somme, his grandmother was convinced it was a birth defect, and his grandfather declared it was a way of dodging work. Thus Sillitoe sets the tone for a tale in which &ldquo;anything which is not scientific or mathematical thought is colored by the human imagination and feeble opinion.&rdquo; In order to rediscover the fictional truth behind his own spirit, Sillitoe then delves into his heritage. He paints a telling portrait of his maternal grandfather, a blacksmith who hated dogs, despised the people who loved him, and was blinded in one eye by a shred of steel. Separated from society by his illiteracy, and both feared and respected for his instinctual cunning, Ernest was a tyrant to his wife and eight children, a hardworking provider, and a talented craftsman. On his father&rsquo;s side of the family, Sillitoe explores the life of his uncle Edgar, &ldquo;the darling of the family&rdquo; who enlisted in the British army when the Great War began in 1914. However, when the young man discovered that his service consisted of dysentery, haircuts, and taking orders, he &ldquo;sensibly&rdquo; deserts. To avoid the military police, he leaves Nottingham and bicycles furiously on the back roads to his sister&rsquo;s house in Hinkley, but is caught a few days later in a pub and sent back to his battalion. A persistent man, Edgar deserts a second time and hides out in the forest, but again he is captured and sent just in time to join the Sherwood Foresters on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Raw Material spans a century of family history and legends, interweaving personal memories with collected facts and hearsay. The &ldquo;kitchen-sink realism&rdquo; Sillitoe is known for takes on a more philosophical and transparent approach in this innovative self-portrait that explores the base matter and inspirations of the esteemed British novelist&rsquo;s life work. </div>

Raw Material

<div>A journey into nineteenth-century travel guides to the UK, Europe, and Soviet Union as researched and written by one of England&rsquo;s most distinguished authors. In this quirky and illuminating social history, bestselling British author Alan Sillitoe culls fascinating details from Victorian-era guidebooks and travelogues in order to recount the pleasures, dangers, traps, and delights of travel in the century leading up to World War I. For instance, in Switzerland, an English officer once fell into a bears&rsquo; den and was &ldquo;torn in pieces.&rdquo; In Paris, the outdoor seating at caf&eacute;s was in &ldquo;unpleasant proximity to the gutters.&rdquo; In Germany and the Rhine, the denominations marked on coins did not necessarily indicate their value. And in Northern Italy, a traveler could look forward to a paradise of citron and myrtle, palms and cyclamen. For the armchair traveler journeying into a bygone era, Sillitoe begins with the essential practicalities relevant to any tourist: the price of passports and visas, how best to clear customs, and how many bags to pack. He includes timeless advice, such as: Board a boat on an empty stomach if you are prone to seasickness, and always break in your boots before embarking on a trip. Anachronistic recommendations abound as well: It is best to leave your servant at home, carry your milk with you when traveling to small Italian villages, and not pay children and &ldquo;donkey women&rdquo; for flowers. From convalescent hotels in the South of France to malaria-ridden marshes between Rome and Naples, and from the chaos of Sicily and southern Italy to the dazzling bullfights and rampant thieves of sunny Spain, Sillitoe guides readers through the minutiae of the Mediterranean with wit and historical insight. Then he takes an anecdote-filled road east into Greece, Egypt, the Holy Lands, Turkey, and Russia. Of course, the Grand Tour would not be complete without a thorough account of his home turf of England, with her idiosyncratic hamlets, smoke-filled skies, and working-class townsfolk in high-buckled shoes. At once a fascinating history of travel books from 1815 to 1914 and an entertaining ode to wanderlust, Leading the Blind brings to life the absurd and profound wonders of Victorian globetrotting. With simple but captivating prose, Sillitoe also shows how the way we view foreign lands can reveal a lot about what is happening at home. </div>

Leading the Blind

<div>A candid and surprising memoir of the early life of one of England&rsquo;s most acclaimed and enduring post-WWII writers. Born in 1928 into a poverty-stricken family in working-class Nottingham, bestselling British novelist Alan Sillitoe&rsquo;s childhood was marked by his father&rsquo;s unpredictable and violent rage, as well as a near-certain condemnation to a life of labor on an assembly line. His family relocated frequently to avoid rent collectors, trading in one bug-infested hovel for another. Though intelligent and curious, the young author-to-be failed his grammar school entrance exams, and it seemed he was destined for work in a factory. The onset of Sillitoe&rsquo;s teenage years, however, coincided with the advance of Hitler into Russia, and the war offered a chance for the boy to seek out a different fate. At the age of fourteen, Sillitoe used a fake ID to enroll in the Air Training Corps and went on to join the Ministry of Aircraft Production as an air traffic control assistant. He dreamed of becoming a pilot, but the war ended just after he qualified for training and he was instead shipped off to the Malayan jungle during the Communist insurgency as a radio operator for the Royal Air Force (RAF). After two years of living from one wireless watch to the next&mdash;taking in bearings and atmospherics though the radio, and exploring dangerous and primal landscapes by foot&mdash;Sillitoe finally returned to a prospectless postwar England and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. But this curse soon became a blessing: In the RAF hospital, Sillitoe began to read&mdash;everything from Kant to Descartes to Bernard Shaw&mdash;and he decided to become a writer. Already a veteran on an RAF disability pension at the age of twenty-one, Sillitoe began writing full-time, neither his physical challenges nor his numerous rejections from publishers deterring him in the least. He joined the Nottingham Writers&rsquo; Club, and his short stories began to achieve some minor local success. Soon after, a chance meeting with the American poet Ruth Fainlight led to full-blown love, and the two set off for France eager to live in a bucolic setting where they could dedicate all of their time to writing. Circumstance and favorable exchange rates then led the couple to Spain where Sillitoe continued his literary pursuits, met many artists and writers, had run-ins with gypsies, and even underwent police interrogations. Four unpublished novels later&mdash;and after nearly a decade of honing his craft&mdash;Sillitoe finally found staggering success in his working-class novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and his collection of short stories The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Written with Sillitoe&rsquo;s signature simplicity, this in-depth autobiography not only gives insight into the formative years and mental maturation of one of Britain&rsquo;s most influential writers, but also tells a great story of an underprivileged man who, with perseverance, made the most of his particular fate.</div>

Life Without Armour

<div>Over forty short stories spanning the career of England&rsquo;s most acclaimed postwar writer&mdash;including the iconic &ldquo;The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.&rdquo; This comprehensive collection of short fiction from bestselling British author Alan Sillitoe mixes aggression with humor, and common working-class men with extraordinary twists of fate. It compiles works selected from the master storyteller&rsquo;s bestselling books, including The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner; The Ragman&rsquo;s Daughter; Guzman, Go Home; Men, Women and Children; and The Second Chance. Several previously unpublished works are also included. In the title story from The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner&mdash;which was adapted for film in 1962&mdash;a seventeen-year-old inmate in a juvenile detention center must make a difficult life choice. Should he strive to win the national long-distance running competition as everyone is counting on him to do, or should he refuse to vindicate the very system and society that has locked him up? The titular piece from The Ragman&rsquo;s Daughter is a lively and poignant narrative about an eighteen-year-old thief named Tony and his new girlfriend, Doris, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do scrap dealer. The couple embarks on a wild robbery spree, but after a raid on a shoe shop goes absurdly wrong, Tony ends up behind bars and Doris remains free&mdash;but suffers a dark destiny. A standout tale from Guzman, Go Home, &ldquo;Revenge&rdquo; details the dangerously tumultuous marriage between factory foreman Richard and his ornery wife, Caroline. &ldquo;Mimic,&rdquo; from the previously collected Men, Women and Children, takes place in the mind of a nameless hero who is locked away in an asylum&mdash;a man who uses the art of mimicry to escape reality and avoid being himself. And in &ldquo;No Name in the Street,&rdquo; from The Second Chance, an ex-miner who ekes out a living collecting social security and hunting for golf balls, moves in with a woman who has indoor plumbing&mdash;but his dog refuses to go along with the plan. This essential collection reveals the power and timelessness of Sillitoe&rsquo;s short fiction. Called &ldquo;a master of the short story&rdquo; by the Times, the author portrays the complex ethos and pathos of working-class life.</div>

New and Collected Stories

<div>A sweeping collection of poetry from one of Great Britain&rsquo;s most celebrated postwar writers. Bestselling British novelist Alan Sillitoe delves into the profound and personal world of poetry in this collection of two hundred poems written between 1950 and 1990. Culled from seven previously published volumes of verse&mdash;and including twenty-one newly collected works&mdash;Sillitoe employs wit, humor, aggression, and longing to take readers into the depths of his perceptions and philosophical musings. The compilation begins with Sillitoe&rsquo;s early poems, which first appeared in The Rats and Other Poems (1960) while the writer was at work on his acclaimed novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. In &ldquo;Shadow&rdquo; a castaway meets a gentleman whom he recognizes as his own death. Meanwhile, a temperate climate renders death powerless in &ldquo;Poem Written in Majorca.&rdquo; And in &ldquo;Excerpts from &lsquo;The Rats&rsquo;,&rdquo; themes of mental exile, isolation, and the proliferation of corruption echo the sentiments of Arthur Seaton, the hero of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Proceeding chronologically, the next section includes works from A Falling Out of Love and Other Poems (1964). Here, the reader encounters a haunting confrontation with suicide in &ldquo;Poem Left by a Dead Man,&rdquo; a meditation on the elemental yet incomparable suffering of a poet in &ldquo;Storm,&rdquo; and a description of metaphysical chores in &ldquo;Housewife.&rdquo; Selections from Love in the Environs of Voronezh and Other Poems (1968) and Storm and Other Poems (1974) follow, including such works as &ldquo;Baby&rdquo; and &ldquo;Smile,&rdquo; which ponder questions of inevitability and impossibility in everyday life. Unexpected perspectives on the Devil appear in the poems from Snow on the North Side of Lucifer (1979). Sun Before Departure (1974&ndash;1982) features the surreal and atmospheric &ldquo;Horse on Wenlock Edge.&rdquo; And the selections from Tides and Stone Walls (1986), including the koanlike &ldquo;Receding Tide,&rdquo; were inspired by a series of sea landscapes by photographer Victor Bowley. In the final section, New Poems (1986&ndash;1990), Sillitoe contemplates hope in the aftermath of war in &ldquo;Hiroshima,&rdquo; and deciphers an uncanny Morse code message in &ldquo;Noah&rsquo;s Arc.&rdquo; At once dark and luminous, Collected Poems offers both a departure from and insight into the &ldquo;kitchen sink realism&rdquo; Sillitoe is famous for. These pages impart an intimate look into the heart and mind of one of England&rsquo;s most celebrated authors, and convey a profound vision of life&mdash;one in which death is close, but laughter is never far away. </div>

Collected Poems

<div>This memoir and literary travelogue from one of the UK&rsquo;s most esteemed novelists offers rare insight into Cold War&ndash;era Russia. In 1967, seeking an escape from his writing life, bestselling British novelist Alan Sillitoe embarks on a road trip from England to Russia via Harwich and Finland in his sturdy Peugeot. During his teens, the author had a cartographic fascination with the Battle of Stalingrad, and decades later he is still armed with intricate maps of the country based on British military intelligence, including one of the road from Leningrad to Moscow to Kiev, which he drew himself. Also in tow are a prismatic compass, binoculars, and a shortwave radio receiver. However, despite being so well prepared, Sillitoe embarks with naivet&eacute; about the political precariousness of an Englishman in the eyes of the Soviet regime. After passing through the endless days of a Scandinavian summer and a prolonged stop at a border control checkpoint&mdash;with his maps hidden in a secret compartment of the car&mdash;Sillitoe arrives in Leningrad. There, he meets George Andjaparidze, a worldly and candid English student who has been assigned by the Writers&rsquo; Union to serve as the author&rsquo;s guide and keep him out of trouble. Though Sillitoe would rather continue his journey solo, Andjaparidze grows on him, and they begin what will become a lasting friendship. As soon as the duo leaves Leningrad, adventures and misadventures ensue. En route to Moscow, Sillitoe and Andjaparidze end up racing a pack of middle-age men in German sports cars partaking in a Berlin-to-Moscow rally. Sillitoe and Andjaparidze&rsquo;s time in the capital is equally fast-paced, consisting of late nights fueled by vodka, impounded rubles, caviar breakfasts, erudite parties, and a pat on the back from a traffic cop for writing about the working class. A winding drive across western Russia and into Yugoslavia follows, replete with rebellious literature students, a speech on freedom, a visit to Tolstoy&rsquo;s estate, accusations of espionage, and a near-fatal run-in with a brigade of Red Army tanks. At last the writer and guide reach their destination: Kursk, that fateful place where a Soviet victory in 1943 turned back the Nazi tide. But the story continues long after the road trip ends. Back in England, Andjaparidze visits Sillitoe and the two are caught up in a controversy surrounding the defection of the Soviet writer Anatoly Kuznetsov. Written from the perspective of another trip to Russia forty years later (Sillitoe was invited in 2005 by the British Council to return to Moscow), this travelogue provides a rare and intimate look at the country&rsquo;s history, a compassionate understanding of its troubled ideology, and a frank portrayal of its undeniable lure. </div>

Gadfly in Russia

<div>An outrageously funny novel of adventure, sex, corruption, and crime from one of the greatest British authors of the twentieth century. Michael Cullen is proud to be a bastard. His first memories are of the war, when his mother welcomed every soldier in Britain into her house, and young Michael hid beneath her bed to let the rocking of the springs lull him to sleep. By the time he&rsquo;s eighteen, he&rsquo;s got a pregnant girlfriend, and is staring down a long life of working-class respectability that simply makes him sick. So Michael says goodbye to his girlfriend and his home in Nottingham, and hits the road for London, where he will make his fortune&mdash;or die trying. From the nightclubs of Soho to the depths of London&rsquo;s underworld, Michael can&rsquo;t help but get into trouble. But whether he&rsquo;s chauffeuring a vicious gangster or smuggling gold bullion across the channel, he never stops having a wonderful time. Indeed, Michael is something else entirely: a happy bastard with nothing to lose. A rollicking picaresque novel by the legendary author of such classics of kitchen sink realism as The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Start in Life is one of the funniest British novels of the twentieth century. A Start in Life is the 1st book in the Michael Cullen Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. &ldquo;A Start in Life is, for my money, the best novel that Sillitoe has yet written.&rdquo; &mdash;New Statesman &ldquo;The kind of hilarious nonsense that keeps you riveted to deck-chair or arm-chair, depending on the season.&rdquo; &mdash;The Daily Telegraph Praise for Alan Sillitoe &ldquo;The master of British verbal architecture.&rdquo; &mdash;Rolling Stone Alan Sillitoe (1928&ndash;2010) was a British novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright, known for his honest, humorous, and acerbic accounts of working-class life. Sillitoe served four years in the Royal Air Force and lived for six years in France and Spain, before returning to England. His first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, was published in 1958 and was followed by a collection of short stories, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. With over fifty volumes to his name, Sillitoe was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997. </div>

A Start in Life

<div>A laugh-out-loud adventure novel starring bestselling author Alan Sillitoe&rsquo;s most outrageous character: the happy bastard Michael Cullen. For most of his life, Michael Cullen was a twenty-two-carat no-good bastard, and he was quite proud of it. But after a series of outlandish criminal adventures revealed the true identity of his father, Michael made the mistake of introducing him to dear old ma. His parents wed, and Michael was a bastard no more. But he was still a rake, with a devilish sense of humor and a refreshing lack of scruples. After a disastrous escapade smuggling gold for the ruthless gangster Claude Moggerhanger, Michael resolves to go straight. But when he learns his father is writing Lord Moggerhanger&rsquo;s memoirs, he falls into old habits, if only for a chance to get behind the wheel of the gangster&rsquo;s Rolls Royce. With the open road in front of him, the police behind him, and randy waitresses at every lay-by, Michael will be a happy bastard once again. From the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Life Goes On continues the legend of one of Britain&rsquo;s most unlikely heroes, which began in the classic picaresque A Start in Life. Whether chasing love, money, sex, or even peace and quiet, there is nothing Michael Cullen can&rsquo;t make into an adventure. Life Goes On is the 2nd book in the Michael Cullen Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. </div>

Life Goes On

<div>Three uproarious comic novels from the iconic author of such classics as The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Alan Sillitoe has been hailed as &ldquo;the most quietly eloquent of his cohort of postwar British novelists&rdquo; (Jonathan Lethem). Here are three of Sillitoe&rsquo;s finest and funniest, chronicling the adventures of the &ldquo;happy bastard&rdquo; Michael Cullen. A Start in Life: The saga begins as Michael Cullen says goodbye to his home in Nottingham and hits the road for London. There he will make his fortune&mdash;or die trying. Life Goes On: The legend of Britain&rsquo;s most unlikely hero continues. After a series of outlandish criminal adventures, Cullen is a bastard no more. But he is still a rake with a refreshing lack of scruples. With the open road in front of him, the police behind him, and randy waitresses at every lay-by, Cullen is up to his old tricks once again. Moggerhanger: This madcap tale finds Cullen hired by his ex-boss, racketeer Claude Moggerhanger, to do a little &ldquo;job.&rdquo; But that&rsquo;s just the beginning of a wild adventure featuring crazed poets; endless women; rat catchers; Labrador retrievers; and his old friend, former mercenary soldier Bill Straw. Rolling Stone called Alan Sillitoe &ldquo;the master of British verbal architecture.&rdquo; These three novels also reveal him as a master of the picaresque, one of the truly unmistakable and original voices in modern fiction.</div>

The Michael Cullen Novels

<div>These memorable novels show the range of the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, &ldquo;one of the best English writers&rdquo; (The New York Times). British novelist Alan Sillitoe &ldquo;powerfully depicted revolt against authority by the young and working class&rdquo; in his best-known works of fiction (The Washington Post). Both The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were international bestsellers and made into acclaimed films. The prolific, award-winning author wrote over fifty books, including the three novels collected in this volume: a hard-won love story, a father-son tale of love and war, and a dystopian satire. Her Victory: Finally leaving her brutish husband, Pam flees to London, where she takes refuge in a lonely, sparsely furnished room. With a twist of the wrist, she turns on the gas and resigns herself to death, only to be saved by a neighbor, Tom, a former sailor in the Merchant Navy, who carries scars of his own. Both fighting despair, these two unlikely lovers attempt to begin a new life together and find a reason to go on. &ldquo;Engrossing . . . Interesting and affecting.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times The Widower&rsquo;s Son: Leaving the coal mines for the army, Charlie Scorton never looked back. After his wife died, the career military man raised his son to be a soldier as well. Like his father, William finds a home in the army, performing heroically at Dunkirk. But soon he will be forced to answer the question his father never could: What does a soldier do when war is over? &ldquo;Earnest, tenacious . . . Sillitoe retains his commendable honesty.&rdquo; &mdash;Kirkus Reviews Travels in Nihilon: In Sillitoe&rsquo;s biting satirical novel, Nihilon is a country where honesty is outlawed, drunk driving is mandatory, and nihilism reigns supreme. Five researchers are sent into the midst of this chaos to compile a new guidebook about the peculiar, unexplored land and its all-powerful leader, President Nil. They arrive as tourists, but they&rsquo;ll soon find out it&rsquo;s a lot easier to enter Nihilon than it is to escape. &ldquo;Diabolically witty.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times</div>

The Collected Novels Volume One

<div>These later novels from the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, &ldquo;one of the best English writers,&rdquo; reflect his imaginative scope (The New York Times). British novelist Alan Sillitoe &ldquo;powerfully depicted revolt against authority by the young and working class&rdquo; in his best-known works of fiction (The Washington Post). Both The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were international bestsellers and made into acclaimed films. The prolific, award-winning author wrote over fifty books, including the three novels collected in this volume: a coming-of-age story about a young man who reinvents himself, a thriller featuring a blind veteran who thwarts a high-seas heroin heist&mdash;for love, and a seafaring search for Nazi treasure. The Broken Chariot: Class and identity are lifelong struggles for Herbert Thurgarton-Strang, born in India but sent away at seven to a boarding school in England. At seventeen, the rebellious young man finally breaks free from school and heads into the industrial slums of Nottingham, where he reinvents himself as &ldquo;Bert Gedling&rdquo;&mdash;a working-class lathe man, a drinker, a womanizer, and eventually a soldier. He continues to adapt his character on his tour of duty, and when he returns to England he transforms once again&mdash;but this time the fictions he constructs will follow the truth of his heart. &ldquo;[Tackles] the issue of class in a way that is often surprising and always entertaining.&rdquo; &mdash;Yorkshire Post The German Numbers Woman: Blinded in the war, RAF veteran Howard views the world through radio waves, eavesdropping on global affairs and secret transmissions with his mastery of Morse code. But when he becomes obsessed with the voice of a female sailor and her mysterious communications, his own relationship with his wife begins to dissolve. To bring her husband back, she introduces him to Richard, a fellow code-breaking buff. But when Richard&rsquo;s dealings in the black market send the female sailor on a dangerous drug run, Howard sets off to save her. &ldquo;Sillitoe still effectively portrays the psychological idiosyncrasies of British reserve with chilling detail and a tender appreciation for obsessive loners.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly The Lost Flying Boat: A top-secret mission sends a crew of Royal Air Force veterans from South Africa to the subarctic Kerguelen Islands. At the helm of the seaplane Aldebaran sits the monomaniacal Captain Bennett, a man hell-bent on unearthing a treasure buried by the Germans in the final days of World War II. On the seaplane&rsquo;s radio is the young wireless operator Adcock, a man whose morals are soon put to the test as machine guns are mounted on the flying boat&rsquo;s turrets and the thirst for gold may cost the crew their lives. &ldquo;Remarkably credible . . . [Sillitoe&rsquo;s] treasure-seekers are well-observed human beings.&rdquo; &mdash;The Sunday Telegraph</div>

The Collected Novels Volume Two

<div>The bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner takes his examination of British working-class rebellion into the 1960s. In his best-known works of fiction, British novelist Alan Sillitoe &ldquo;powerfully depicted revolt against authority by the young and working class&rdquo; (The Washington Post). Both The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were international bestsellers and made into acclaimed films. Following those acknowledged masterpieces, Sillitoe continued to explore rebellion against an oppressive society in three novels linked by anarchist antihero Frank Dawley. In these powerful novels, Sillitoe would continue to prove himself &ldquo;one of the best English writers&rdquo; (The New York Times) and &ldquo;the most quietly eloquent of his cohort of postwar British novelists&rdquo; (Jonathan Lethem). The Death of William Posters: Frank Dawley has finally quit his soul-crushing factory job in Nottingham, left his alienating marriage, burned his possessions, and sold his car. Now he is hitching a ride to wherever the road will take him. Haunting Frank&rsquo;s physical and existential travels is a ubiquitous inscription painted on nearly every street corner in England: BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Relentlessly hounded by authorities, whoever William Posters is, he becomes a symbol of the servile proletariat&mdash;exactly what Frank hopes to escape. He finds his way from England to Spain to Morocco&mdash;and into the beds of several married women along the way. Finally, in Algeria, he meets a revolutionary American, whom he joins in a high-stakes gunrunning mission. A Tree on Fire: Jewish dilettante Myra Bassingfield is returning to England from Gibraltar with her four-week-old son. The child&rsquo;s father, Frank Dawley, has disappeared into the African desert, where he is fighting for Algerian independence against French troops. Greeting Myra is Frank&rsquo;s friend, Albert Handley, an idealistic painter living in a chaotic home with a large family. But after Albert&rsquo;s brother burns down the house, the Handley brood moves in with Myra in Buckinghamshire. By the time Frank finally returns to England, they have formed a commune&mdash;a domestic cell of protest that may just plant the seeds of a new revolution. The Flame of Life: Collective cohabitation soon reveals its downfalls within the commune that has set up camp at the home of wealthy Myra Bassingfield. Painter Albert Handley is pursuing a whirlwind existence of art, sex, and chaotic domestic life. Frank Dawley, returned from gunrunning in Algeria, has brought his wife and two kids from Nottingham to live in the Buckinghamshire kibbutz. And when a young Spanish anarchist arrives with assassination on her mind, her trunk full of notebooks may condemn Frank for a sin committed in the African desert. As the community begins to unravel, the very notion of revolution comes under scrutiny.</div>

Alan Sillitoe
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Books By Alan Sillitoe (28 Books)