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Henry Chinaski, an outcast, a loner and a hopeless drunk, drifts around America from one dead-end job to another, from one woman to another and from one bottle to the next. Uncompromising, gritty, hilarious and confessional in turn, his downward spiral is peppered with black humour.

Factotum follows Charles Bukowski's bestselling Post Office, his highly autobiographical first novel. Bukowski's Beat Generation writing reflects his slum upbringing, his succession of menial jobs and his experience of low life urban America. He died in 1994 and is widely acknowledged as one of the most distinctive writers of the last fifty years.

Neeli Cherkovski was a close friend of Bukowski and is the author of Hank: The Life of Charles Bukowski (Random House, 1991) 1Not since George Orwell has the condition of being down-and-out been so well recorded. - New York Times
2Funny and sharp, observant, clever with details and honest. - Times Literary Supplement
3A side-splitting chronicle ... dirty realism from the godfather of lowlife literature - Uncut
4Its genius is simple and it shines a wee candle on the life of an aspiring poet and home-relief applicant - Bizarre * - *

Factotum