Description

Book Synopsis

Never give up hope before the dogs have crossed the finishing-line.

Harryboy Boas is a lowlife gambler. When he''s not at the track, he lives in a Hackney boarding house, reading Zola, eating salt beef, pressing trousers and repressing wartime memories. But when a new family moves into the apartment downstairs, his life starts to unravel and Harryboy soon finds himself sinking into a murky East End underworld where violence, guilt and gangsters are the inevitable result for those who cannot pay their dues.

A celebrated cult classic, The Lowlife brilliantly evokes post-war East London - dog tracks, sandwich shops, tenements, sex workers, newly arrived West Indians and Jews leaving for Finchley - all seen through the tragicomic eyes of Harryboy, our picaresque rogue hero suffering from ''existential burn-out in the shadow of the Holocaust'' (Iain Sinclair) and driven to bet, brag and beg to survive.

''Terrific.'' Sebastian Faulks

The Lowlife

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    A Paperback by Alexander Baron

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    Order before 4pm tomorrow for delivery by Tue 25 Aug 2026.

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      Book details

      Publisher Faber & Faber
      Published 5 August 2025
      ISBN-13 9780571393473
      978-0571393473
      ISBN-10 0571393470
      Also in:
      Fiction Contemporary Fiction

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      Never give up hope before the dogs have crossed the finishing-line.

      Harryboy Boas is a lowlife gambler. When he''s not at the track, he lives in a Hackney boarding house, reading Zola, eating salt beef, pressing trousers and repressing wartime memories. But when a new family moves into the apartment downstairs, his life starts to unravel and Harryboy soon finds himself sinking into a murky East End underworld where violence, guilt and gangsters are the inevitable result for those who cannot pay their dues.

      A celebrated cult classic, The Lowlife brilliantly evokes post-war East London - dog tracks, sandwich shops, tenements, sex workers, newly arrived West Indians and Jews leaving for Finchley - all seen through the tragicomic eyes of Harryboy, our picaresque rogue hero suffering from ''existential burn-out in the shadow of the Holocaust'' (Iain Sinclair) and driven to bet, brag and beg to survive.

      ''Terrific.'' Sebastian Faulks

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