Description
Book SynopsisA wry, intelligent, and unputdownable look at class and national identity today.
Alberto Prunetti arrives in the UK, the twenty-something-year-old son of a Tuscan factory worker who has never left home before. With only broken English, his wits, and an obsession with the work of George Orwell to guide him, he sets about looking for a job and navigating his new home.
In between long, hot shifts in pizzerias and cleaning toilets up and down the country, he finds his place among the British precariat. His comrades form a polyglot underclass, among them an ex-addict cook, a cleaner in love with opera, an elderly Shakespearean actor, Turks impersonating Neapolitans to serve pizzas, and a cast of petty criminals ‘resting’ between bigger jobs.
Stuck between a past haunted by Thatcher and a future dominated by Brexit, Down and Out in England and Italy is a hilarious and poignant snapshot of life on the margins in modern-day Britain.
Trade Review‘A hallucinatory and savage account of modern working life. Both surreal and instantly recognisable.’
-- Jeff Sparrow, author of
No Way But This and
Trigger Warnings‘Raw, mischievous, funny, and vulgar … engaging.’
-- John Mulqueen * Irish Examiner *
‘Humour and sarcasm abound in Prunetti’s slim, fast-paced account, but these do not lessen the anger and poignancy of his analysis of a society in which the workers are sacrificed at the altar of profit.’
-- Giglioa Sulis * TLS *
‘Alberto Prunetti's scatalogical, sociological, phantasmagorical, novel Down and Out in England in Italy might have George Orwell spinning in his grave and chuckling in recognition at the kitchen workers, toilet cleaners, and children of miners and steel workers ... A deep poignancy here too.’
-- Anthony Cartwright, author of
How I Killed Margaret Thatcher‘So funny and full of swagger ... a joy.’
-- Cash Carraway, author of
Skint Estate‘Down and Out in England and Italy is funny, honest, and literary. Prunetti’s memoir reveals what life is really like for those in low-paid jobs around England while celebrating the bonds that exist between the have-nots. All of this and the history of bolognese too!’
-- Paul McVeigh, author of
The Good Son‘A very sweary, grizzled old Italian Lefty … The cast of characters around him is often superbly drawn.’
-- Will Heaven * Mail on Sunday *
‘In the span of a year and a half (the period of time the author himself spent in the UK) Prunetti condenses three decades of neoliberalism, deindustrialisation, attacks on workers’ rights and their wages.’
-- Wu Ming 1/Luther Blissett, author of Q
‘Alberto Prunetti is a brother to every dispossessed wage slave in the UK. This is what’s happening and it’s only getting worse. Prunetti writes like a cross between John Fante and Jason Williamson. Surreal, defiant, and very very funny.’
-- Howard Cunnell, author of
The Painter’s Friend‘Move over Orwell. Down and Out in England and Italy is (first word to last) the most exciting book on working-class experience, casual labour, and serious love (and cost) of book-learning I've ever read. Funny, fierce. I want to read it aloud in public.’
-- Tanya Shadrick, author of
The Cure for Sleep‘Increasingly imaginative, experimental, and polyphonic’
-- Federico Picerni * Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics *
‘Bitterly funny, lyrical, and often scatological … a foulmouthed, hallucinatory, and often surreal account of the contemporary landscape of class.’
-- John Merrick * Jacobin magazine *
‘An urgent examination of class in a 21st-century context.’
* Happy Magazine *
‘The book has a nightmarish Lovecraftian undertone — a creative ploy to underline the unspeakable horrors that workers today face under capitalism.’
-- Ivan Franceschini * Made in China Journal *
‘A working-class story full of humour, misery, and solidarity.’
-- Angelo Boccato * Tribune *
‘An emphasis on language, on dark humour, and critical observations makes [Down and Out in England and Italy] an enjoyable read.’
-- AM Robeson * Reading School Headmaster’s Bulletin *
‘If you ever thought Down and Out in Paris and London would be a much better book if it was set in Bristol, Livorno, and Dorset and rewritten by a working class Italian communist with a taste for football, scatology, and codeine linctus — and who hasn’t — then is this the one for you.’
-- Owen Hatherley, author of
Landscapes of Communism‘Poignant ... in the writing of his experiences, Prunetti finally finds his salvation, offering his readers some deeply uncomfortable glimpses into a world that it’s far cheerier not to contemplate too closely while tucking into that delicious pizza.’
-- Caroline Wyatt * Italian Riveter *
‘The impetuousness and cheerfulness of the story go hand in hand with social indignation. This makes Prunetti’s novel not only unique but also extremely fun to read.’
-- Magnus Nilsson, editor of
Working Class Literature(s)
