Three uproarious comic novels from the iconic author of such classics as The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Alan Sillitoe has been hailed as “the most quietly eloquent of his cohort of postwar British novelists” (Jonathan Lethem). Here are three of Sillitoe’s finest and funniest, chronicling the adventures of the “happy bastard” Michael Cullen. A Start in Life: The saga begins as Michael Cullen says goodbye to his home in Nottingham and hits the road for London. There he will make his fortune—or die trying. Life Goes On: The legend of Britain’s most unlikely hero continues. After a series of outlandish criminal adventures, Cullen is a bastard no more. But he is still a rake with a refreshing lack of scruples. With the open road in front of him, the police behind him, and randy waitresses at every lay-by, Cullen is up to his old tricks once again. Moggerhanger: This madcap tale finds Cullen hired by his ex-boss, racketeer Claude Moggerhanger, to do a little “job.” But that’s just the beginning of a wild adventure featuring crazed poets; endless women; rat catchers; Labrador retrievers; and his old friend, former mercenary soldier Bill Straw. Rolling Stone called Alan Sillitoe “the master of British verbal architecture.” These three novels also reveal him as a master of the picaresque, one of the truly unmistakable and original voices in modern fiction.
