Alan Sillitoe Books

This fusion of novel and memoir chronicles the destructive effects of WWI on two working-class families in Nottingham. Alan Sillitoe, an advocate for ordinary people, combines family memoir with extensive research on military records and artistic speculation in this inventive historical narrative. Central to the story are his grandfather, the blacksmith Ernest Burton, and his uncle Edgar, a World War I deserter. The narrative begins with a legless match-seller from Sillitoe’s childhood, whose deformity sparked various explanations from family members, setting the tone for a tale colored by human imagination and opinion. Sillitoe delves into his heritage, portraying his maternal grandfather as a tyrant who was both feared and respected, separated from society by illiteracy yet a talented craftsman. On his father’s side, he explores the life of his uncle Edgar, who enlisted in the army in 1914 but soon deserted after realizing the harsh realities of military life. Edgar's attempts to evade military service lead him on a tumultuous journey, culminating in his capture and return to duty just in time for the Battle of the Somme. Spanning a century of family history and legends, this work interweaves personal memories with collected facts and hearsay. Sillitoe's signature “kitchen-sink realism” evolves into a more philosophical exploration, reflecting the inspirations behind his esteemed literary career.

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

Gevoelens en ervaringen van een Joodse kleuter, die tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog met zijn ouders enkele jaren in een concentratiekamp doorbrengt.

Alan Sillitoe is famous as a master of the short story. This book shows why. From the bible-basher and his key rôle in PIT STRIKE, to the boy whose parents left each other – and him – the same morning in ENOCH'S TWO LETTERS; from the man who tried to act out a 'real' life in MIMIC, to the woman whose husband came back to her in BEFORE SNOW COMES – these stories go to the heart of the torments and joys of living.

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.

From the author of 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' come stories of hardship and hope in post-war Britain. The title story in this classic collection tells of Smith, a defiant young rebel, inhabiting the no-man's land of institutionalised Borstal. As his steady jog-trot rhythm transports him over an unrelenting, frost-bitten earth, he wonders why, for whom and for what he is running. A groundbreaking work, 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' captured the grim isolation of the working class in the English Midlands when it was first published in 1960s. But Sillitoe's depiction of petty crime and deep-seated anger in industrial and desperate cities remains as potent today as it was almost half a century ago.

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.