Stuart: A Life Backwards Book

This is a major new launch for the paperback edition of the most original captivating and award-winning memoir of the year. "Stuart A Life Backwards" is the story of a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator ('a middle class scum ponce if you want to be honest about it Alexander) and a chaotic knife-wielding beggar whom he gets to know during a campaign to release two charity workers from prison. Interwoven into this is Stuart's confession: the story of his life told backwards. With humour compassion (and exasperation) Masters slowly works back through post-office heists prison riots and the exact day Stuart discovered violence to unfold the reasons why he changed from a happy-go-lucky little boy into a polydrug-addicted-alcoholic Jekyll and Hyde personality with a fondness for what he called 'little strips of silver' (knives to you and me). Funny despairing brilliantly written and full of surprises: this is the most original and moving biography of recent years.

‘Stuart does not like the manuscript. He’s after a bestseller, “like what Tom Clancy writes”. “But you are not an assassin trying to frazzle the president with anthrax bombs,” I point out. You are an ex-homeless, ex-junkie psychopath, I do not add.’This is the story of a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer (‘a middle-class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander’), and Stuart Shorter, a homeless, knife-wielding thief. Told backwards – Stuart’s idea – it starts with a deeply troubled thirty-two-year-old and ends with a ‘happy-go-lucky little boy’ of twelve. This brilliant biography, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, presents a humbling portrait of homeless life, and is as extraordinary and unexpected as the man it describes.

Stuart : Paperback : HarperCollins Publishers : 9780007200375 : : 01 Mar 2011 : 'Stuart does not like the manuscript. He's after a bestseller, "like what Tom Clancy writes"". ""But you are not an assassin trying to frazzle the president with anthrax bombs,"" I point out. You are an ex-homeless, ex-junkie psychopath, I do not add.'"