"In this lost 1963 British classic set in postwar London, a Jewish inveterate gambler's involvement with the troubled family that moves in downstairs awakens painful losses from his past.... Coming from a writer as relaxed and lightly satirical as Baron, Harry's reckoning with memories he has spent his life avoiding couldn't be more powerful. A novel and author richly deserving of renewed attention." --Kirkus starred review ⭐

"Terrific. Propulsive, funny and touching. It moves as fast as the dog in trap 1 at Harringay." --Sebastian Faulks, author of Devil May Care

"A wonderfully enduring novel about seedy post-war English criminal life. Rich characterisation underpinned by a wholly authentic and compelling voice. A great re-discovery." --William Boyd, author of Gabriel's Moon

"A subcultural classic."--Jon Savage, author of This Searing Light, the Sun, and Everything Else

"The most perfectly proportioned London novel, capturing the grind of scheming, dreaming, struggle - and, of course, the city in all its grime and glory." --Benjamin Myers, author of The Gallows Pole

"The wonder of The Lowlife is that it does justice to a place of so many contradictions ... One of the best fictions, the truest accounts of [Hackney]"--Iain Sinclair

"A beautifully observed, understated study of an East End Jewish gambler...something of an underground cult."--John L. Williams, Guardian

"A visceral rendering of a city on the cusp between the Ration Book Fifties and the Swinging Sixties." --Cathi Unsworth

"A short-odds favourite for the finest British novel about addiction."--Paul Willetts

"Emile Zola meets Patrick Hamilton in one of the great post-war London novels, a seedy but soulful study of bruised characters struggling to survive on the fringes of convention."--Peter Watts

"A reflective gem of London literature." --John King

"As a vivid depiction of a long-gone London that's still strangely familiar, The Lowlife is an essential novel of the city, its power undiminished."--Gary Budden

"Exquisitely depicting the changing face of post-war Britain, The Lowlife is a highly moving book, which, like Harryboy Boas, is also often very funny and never entirely without hope." --Lee Stuart Evans, author of Pleasantly Disturbed

"A fascinating snapshot of a lost London world, by a remarkable, unjustly neglected writer." --Sarah Waters