Baron, Alexander

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 8 May 2025 by FABER & FABER in the United Kingdom as part of ‘the Faber Editions’ series.

Paperback | 256 pages
130 x 198 x 19 | 222g

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 Finc