The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Flamingo Modern Classic) [Paperback]

‘Cunning is what counts in life,’ says the seventeen-year-old narrator of the title piece of this exuberant collection of darkly comic tales that established Alan Sillitoe as one of England’s best writers and gave a voice to an entire generation of angry young men. Full of hard-won wisdom and gritty authenticity, these stories of working-class blokes slugging it out with the system in 1950s Nottingham resonate with the lusty defiance of those whose will cannot be broken by oppressive poverty. Poignant, often uproarious, and full of life, the stories provide fascinating social commentary and stand together in this collection as a modern British classic. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Smith is an incorrigible and defiant young rebel, inhabiting a no-man's land of institutionalised Borstal. Watched over by a phlegmy sunlight, as his steady jog-trot rhythm transports him over an unrelenting, frost-bitten earth, he wonders why, for whom and what he is running.

The film of the story, starring Tom Courtenay and Michael Redgrave, has cult status.

Evocative, realistic and superbly written, the other stories in this collection introduce us to, among others: the war-veteran Uncle Earnest who resorts to the oblivion of the beer pump to fill the passage of empty, loveless days; the school teacher Mr Raynor who relies on voyeurism to reward his exasperated, solitary existence.

"Sillitoe writes with tremendous energy, and his stories simply tear along."
DAILY TELEGRAPH

"All the imaginative sympathy in the world can't fake this kind of thing. It must have been lived in, seen, touched, smelled: and we are lucky to have a writer who has come out of it knowing the truth, and having the skill to turn that truth into art."
NEW STATESMAN

"Graphic, tough, outspoken, informal."
THE TIMES

"A beautiful piece of work, confirming Sillitoe as a writer of unusual spirit and great promise."
GUARDIAN

"A major writer who ought to be read."
MALCOLM BRADBURY

Alan Sillitoe was born in 1928 and left school at 14 to work in various factories. He began writing after four years in the RAF, and lived for six years in France and Spain. His first stories were printed in the ‘Nottingham Weekly Guardian’. In 1958 ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ was published and ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’, which won the Hawthornden prize for Literature, came out the following year. Both these books were made into films.