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Summary
The day they moved in was a memorable one for me. Not because of them, for I couldn’t know what they were to bring into my life, but because of a dog.
Harryboy Boas is a gambling man. An independent Jewish bachelor, he lives in a Hackney boarding house: reading Zola, betting on the dogs at the track, womanising, philosophising, and repressing his tortured wartime past. Until, that is, a new family moves in. As his life dramatically unravels – financially, emotionally, and existentially – Harryboy descends into a murky criminal underworld where debts, violence, gangsters and revenge are the inevitable payback for those who can’t pay up …
‘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, London]’ Iain Sinclair
‘The greatest British novelist of the last war and among the finest, most underrated, of the postwar period . . . The Lowlife has acquired something of an underground cult.’ Guardian
To celebrate the republication of The Lowlife, we look at some other great London novels, with a focus on life …