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A Cage of Shadows was first published in 1973 to enthusiastic reviews and announced the arrival of a major new writer. Set in the Black Country during the 1930s, it tells of Hill''s brutal upbringing. On leaving home, he encountered further degradation in prisons, mental hospitals and on skid row. But a chance meeting in the ''50s changed his life: Hill became friends with Klaus ''Doc'' Fuchs, who instilled in him a passion for literature and encouraged him to write. Libel action in 1975 meant copies of A Cage of Shadows were pulped. This new edition reinstates the original text.
Review:
Original Reviews for Cage of Shadows
Literacy has not trained out of Archie Hill the rare and, for an autobiographer, vital gift of projecting himself back into the past. His past, in A Cage of Shadows, is not recollected in tranquillity, but relived with the desperate rage of a frustrated child. - Times Literary Supplement
An excellent book, written with a sharp eye for the small significant details of human relationships, and with a gift for dialogue and for fresh poetic imagery. - New Statesman
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that here is an author who can write not only well but at many times brilliantly, and who can and does put over his feelings and thoughts with a salty incisiveness and lack of self-pity or sentimentality. --Tony Parker author of People of the Streets; Studs Terkel, A Life in Words
In the bleak misery of the Depression Mr Hill shows how the heroes created by the warlords tackled the obscenities of unemployment and poverty with courage, humour and, at times, reckless bravado. An excellent book written with humility and humanity. --The Times
Title: A Cage of Shadows
Publisher: Tangerine Press, GB
Publication Date: 2017
Binding: Paperback
Condition: New