Last Exit to Brooklyn - Softcover

Selby, Hubert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747549923 ISBN 13: 9780747549925

Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

An unforgettable cast of characters inhabits the housing projects, bars and streets of Brooklyn: Georgette, a hopelessly romantic and tormented transvestite; Vinnie, a disaffected and volatile youth who has never been on the right side of the law; Tralala, who can find no escape from her loveless existence; and, Harry, a power-hungry strike leader with a fatal secret. Living on the edge, always walking on the wild side, their alienation and aggression masks a desperate, deep human need for affection and kinship. Banned in Britain on first publication in 1964, "Last Exit to Brooklyn" brought its ex-marine, drug addict author instant notoriety. Its truthfulness stunned a generation and continues to shock to this day.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

The first novel to articulate the rage and pain of life in "the other America," Last Exit to Brooklyn is a classic of postwar American writing. Selby's searing portrait of the powerless, the homeless, the dispossessed, is as fiercely and frighteningly apposite today as it was when it was first published more than thirty-five years ago.

"An extraordinary achievement,...a vision of hell so stern it cannot be chuckled or raged aside."--The New York Times Book Review

"As dramatic and immediate as the click of a switchblade knife."--Los Angeles Times

"The raw strength and concentrated power of Last Exit to Brooklyn make it one of the really great works of fiction about the underground labyrinth of our cities."--Harry T. Moore

"Last Exit to Brooklyn should explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America and still be eagerly read in a hundred years."--Allen Ginsberg

"Drops like a sledgehammer. Emotionally beaten, one leaves it a different person-slightly changed, educated by pain, as Goethe said."--The Nation

"Selby has an unerring instinct for honing our collapse into novels as glittering and as cutting as pure, black, jagged glass."--Saturday Review

"Scorching, unrelenting, pulsing."--Newsweek

Hubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn in 1928. Last Exit to Brooklyn, his first novel, was originally published in 1964. He has since written five other novels, The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, and The Willow Tree, and a collection of short stories, Song of the Silent Snow. Mr. Selby lives in Los Angeles.

About the Author

Hubert Selby Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York. After leaving school he went to sea until illness forced him to leave the Merchant Marines. He began publishing stories in the 1950s, but it was the appearance of LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN in the mid-sixties that brought him widespread recognition. On British publication the book was prosecuted for obscenity, but won its protracted court case on appeal. Hubert Selby's other works are THE ROOM (1971), THE DEMON (1973), REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (1978) and SONG OF THE SILENT SNOW (1986). He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747549923
• ISBN 13: 9780747549925
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320