The Lowlife (Faber Editions)

One man gambles on not only the racing dogs but his life in this charismatic rediscovered Jewish post-war classic of London's seedy underbelly, introduced by Iain Sinclair.

'Extraordinary.', William Boyd
'The wonder of The Lowlife is that it does justice to a place of so many contradictions ... One of the best fictions, the truest accounts of [Hackney]', Iain Sinclair

Alexander Baron (1917 - 1999) grew up in in Hackney, East London. The son of Jewish parents, he was drawn into the anti-fascist struggle, confronting Mosley's blackshirts on the streets of Whitechapel. He became assistant editor of Tribune before enlisting in the army in 1940 and fighting in Italy, Sicily and across France from the Normandy D-Day beaches. His experiences during the Second World War gave him the material for his first novel, From the City, From the Plough (1948), the first in his celebrated wartime trilogy. He wrote several novels set in London's East End as well as Hollywood screenplays and BBC adaptations of classic novels. Carl Foreman's great war film The Victors (1963) was adapted from Baron's The Human Kind (1953). He died in 1999.