Alan Sillitoe Libri

Thirty-eight stories on life among the English working classes. They include The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, on a rebellious youth in a reformatory, and Mr. Raynor the School Teacher, on a teacher who is a Peeping Tom

"Cunning is what counts in life," says the seventeen-year-old narrator of the title piece of this exuberant collection of darkly comic tales that established Alan Sillitoe as one of England's best writers and gave a voice to an entire generation of angry young men. Full of hard-won wisdom and gritty authenticity, these stories of working-class blokes slugging it out with the system in 1950's Nottingham resonate with the lusty defiance of those whose will cannot be broken by oppressive poverty. There is the rebellious youth of "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner," whose running becomes a metaphor for his refusal to bow to societal rules in a delinquents' home. "On Saturday Afternoon" tells the story of a young man, fed up with life and angry at the world, who learns a life lesson when he stumbles across a neighbor attempting suicide. In "Noah's Ark," a boy who plays a con game at an amusement park gets taken for a spin himself. And "The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller" is a rollicking tale of unbridled childhood fantasy and a moving tribute to the liberating powers of imagination. Poignant, often uproarious, and full of life, these nine stories provide stunning social comentary, a collection that stands as a modern British classic.

Birthday is the long-awaited sequel to Alan Sillitoe's classic novel of the 1950s, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Four decades on from the novel which was at the forefront of the new wave of British Literature, we re-discover the Seaton brothers: older, cetainly; wiser - possibly not. Arthur and Brian Seaton, one with an ailing wife, one with an emotional knapsack of failure and success, are on their way to Jenny's 70th birthday party. Jenny and Brian had years ago experimented with sex - semi-clothed, stealthy, with the bonus of fear. Arthur, of course, had cut a winning swathe through the married and unmarried women of Nottinghamshire. Life has changed. Alan Sillitoe is undoubtedly one of the greatest English writers of our time, and, indeed, one of the most influential.

A wonderful historical novel from one of our best loved and most prolific writersAs a young man Ernest Burton was a bold and reckless journeyman blacksmith, seducing all young girls he comes across. We watch him grow to become a master Blacksmith, and a tyrannical father of eight who refuses even to try to remain faithful to the woman he married and who reigns over his young family with an iron fist, instilling in his sons and daughters a mixture of fear and hatred of him. Burton is an extraordinary fictional creation a bully who shows no mercy in his relentless terrorism of his sons, he can also be effortlessly charming, with a magnetic attraction that effects all he meets.Written in the sparse, plain language that Sillitoe has made his own, A Man of His Time is a mesmerising portrait of an extraordinary individual, aware that he is, in many ways, the last of a dying breed. It's a rich, absorbing, wonderfully readable novel that covers decades and crosses generations, depicting with singular brilliance an England poised on the brink of change.

«La sera la mamma mi domandò che cosa avevo fatto durante il giorno. Le raccontai che ero stato insieme ai ragazzi più grandi. Mi domandò se mi prendevano così senz'altro con loro e io le spiegai che ora sì, mi prendevano con loro, perché avevo superato la prova. Ero stato all'osservatorio. Lei mi domandò che cos'era, un osservatorio. Risposi che lo sapeva benissimo, che lì c'erano i cadaveri e che sapeva anche benissimo che mio padre era stato gettato sopra gli altri cadaveri e che non aveva neppure un lenzuolo e io avevo detto ai bambini che ne aveva sì uno, mentre avevo visto benissimo che non ne aveva. Mi misi a strillare che lei era matta a lasciare che lo buttassero così sugli altri cadaveri senza lenzuolo...».

Sillitoe's portrayal of the mind of an incorrigible rebel. By the author of "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning", "Snowstop", "The Open Door", "Life Goes On", "The Storyteller" and "Last Loves".