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44 matches in All Departments
John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his
experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess
in prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind. This Penguin
Classics edition includes an afterword by Colin MacCabe. In his
searing autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living
rough in London without state aid, when begging carried an
automatic three-year prison sentence and vagrant alcoholics prowled
the parks and streets in search of drink or prey. When not united
in their common aim of acquiring alcohol, winos sometimes murdered
one another over prostitutes or a bottle, or the begging of money.
Few modern writers have managed to match Healy's power to refine
from the brutal destructive condition of the chronic alcoholic a
story so compelling it is beyond comparison. John Healy (b. 1943)
was born into an impoverished, Irish immigrant family, in the slums
of Kentish Town, North London. Out of school by 14, pressed into
the army and intermittently in prison, Healy became an alcoholic
early on in life. Despite these obstacles Healy achieved
remarkable, indeed phenomenal expertise in both writing and chess,
as outlined in the autobiographical The Grass Arena. If you enjoyed
The Grass Arena, you might like Last Exit to Brooklyn, also
available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Sober and precise,
grotesque, violent, sad, charming and hilarious all at once'
Literary Review 'Beside it, a book like Orwell's Down and Out in
Paris and London seems a rather inaccurate tourist guide' Colin
MacCabe
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