Fowler's End - Softcover

Kersh, Gerald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860468322 ISBN 13: 9781860468322

Publisher: Vintage, 2001

Synopsis

To this wildly debased neighbourhood comes Daniel Laverock, a strong, proud, awesomely ugly man in search of employment. Thanks to his horrifying physiognomy, which conceals the softest of hearts, he wins a job as manager of a movie house. It is a flea pit, a vile retreat for predatory children, a place where thugs relax between felonies. Its owner, Sam Yudenow, is a sort of philosopher. At first Laverock is dazzled by Sam, by his splendidly garbled speech, his flawless depravity, his complete emancipation from decent instincts. But not for long. Soon he is leading a group seeking to overthrow the vicious tyrant. Fowlers End is a black comic masterpiece filled with exuberant language and outrageous characters.

About this title

Book Description:

In the darkestm furthest corner of London is a bustling, squalid, ramshackle community built on deceit and despair: Fowlers End.

About the Author:

Gerald Kersh was born in 1911, in Teddington-on-Thames. At seven he wrote his first novel and published it privately in a limited edition of one copy, bound in his father's brocade waist-coat. He tore up his second and third literary efforts, but at 23 found a publisher for the third, a novel based on members of his own family, Jews without Jehovah (1934). He was sued by four uncles and a cousin who has seen the manuscript and the book had to be withdrawn on the day of publication. Undeterred, he continued to write, drawing on the facts and characters of his eventful life, to produce 1,000 magazine articles, 400 short stories, and 19 novels, including Night and the City, which has twice been made into a film. During the Second World War Gerald Kersh enlisted, was bombed during the London Blitz, (he survived, the manuscript he was working on at the time did not) and was buried alive three times without ill effect. His account of infantry training was rejected by the War Office, but, published as a novel, They Die with Their Boots Clean (1941), became an instant bestseller. Later, serving as as a war correspondent attached to SHAEF, he attended the liberation of Paris. Shortly after the war he began visiting American, eventually becoming an American citizen. There, as it says on the flyleaf of the first edition of Fowlers End, "his military bearing (a token of service with Her Majesty's Coldstream Guards), his sartorial splendour (waistcoat, walking stick, and fedora), how powerful frame (he is a raconteur in the spellbinder tradition), and his handsome beard (he will not discuss it) [made] him an extravagant delight to his friends and an astonishment to strangers." Gerald Kersh died in 1968.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1860468322
• ISBN 13: 9781860468322
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352