Hubert Selby is probably one of the six best novelists writing in the English language.? Financial Times
Author of controversial cult classic, Last Exit to Brooklyn , Hubert Selby began as a writer of short fiction. He excels in this form, plunging the reader head-first into the densely realized worlds of his protagonists, in which the details of daily life rub shoulders with obsession and madness.
Although fundamentally concerned with morality, Selby's own sense of humility prevents him from preaching. He offers instead a passionate empathy with the ordinary dreams and aspirations of his characters, a brilliant ear for the urban vernacular and for the voices of conscience and self-deceit that torment his characters.
"A major American author of a stature with William Burroughs and Joseph Heller."? Los Angeles Times
"Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists ... to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America."? The New York Times Book Review
Novels by Hubert Selby Jr available from Marion Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream and The Willow Tree ..
Hubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn and went to sea as a merchant marine while still in his teens. Laid low by lung disease, he was, after a decade of hospitalizations, written off as a goner and sent home to die. Deciding instead to live, but having no way to make a living, he came to a realization that would change the course of literature: "I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer." Drawing from the soul of his Brooklyn neighborhood, he began writing something called "The Queen Is D…
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