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Stalin Ate My Homework
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'A great memoir of a strange childhood. "Just let me read you this bit" funny.'
(Frank Cottrell Boyce )'Sayle shares with [Alan] Bennett the genius for making the mundane fascinating'
(The Times )'If the result is like his other books, it will have a moral centre, there'll be bleak bits - and it will be very funny indeed.' (Independent on Sunday )
'The brilliant satires on modern life of Alexei Sayle (the only comedian worth his salt as a novelist) are contemporary gems.'
(Tim Lott, Independent )'Being able to wrap up a big moral conundrum with the guise of a fizzing entertainment is a considerable gift...it is wonderfully entertaining and tells us a lot about what it is like to live in 21st century Britain.'
(Jonathan Coe, Guardian on Overtaken )'It's not like other comedians' memoirs. It's funny.'
(Guardian )'Sayle's book has charm and substance, both as memoir and history.' (TLS )
'this enormously clever comedian is already an established novelist and his childhood was as strange and fascinating as any fiction' (The Times )
Product Description
Alexei Sayle was born in Liverpool on the day egg rationing came to an end.
His family ate salad.
They read the Soviet Weekly.
They travelled on transcontinental trains, and in the back of futuristic limousines.
They saw Communism in action and ate strange smelling sausages.
His mother was very keen on boiled eggs and the Moscow State Circus.
Teachers were scared of her.
His father was a union leader who made friends wherever he went.
He thought he was fluent in Esperanto.
Alexei became a member of the CzechoslovakianYoung Pioneers.
Sometimes he was bored and other times confused.
He thought he might be a great athlete, or maybe a famous artist.
He spent a lot of time inventing complex explanations for the bizarre behaviour of grown-ups.
Slowly it dawned on him that telling stories was a good way of making sense of his perplexing world.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny, insightful, clever and strange.,
This review is from: Stalin Ate My Homework (Hardcover)
This is not a showbiz bio. It is a memoir of a unique childhood presenting a first-hand close-up child's-eye view of the cold war and as such constitutes an important historical document. It's also (almost incidentally) very, very funny. It's also written in a transparently elegant prose style that every writer since Evelyn Waugh would do well to study. It also tells you more about the crucial flaws in Sten gun design, and the useless beauty of 1950s East European limousines than you could ever have believed you wanted to know. It's also a page turner. I read it in two lengthy sessions while the world around continued to fall into hideous disrepair. Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. Here's how.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great entertaining read. Very Nice!,
This review is from: Stalin Ate My Homework (Hardcover)
Another great read from Alexi. Very enjoyable and entertaining learning about his unconventional childhood. The way he describes his summer holiday to Czechoslovakia had me laughing out loud. A very honest account of his younger years which shaped the man he was to become. Lets hope its not too long until he gives us the next installment. More stories please.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Funny but...,
By Custard Fancier "fishophile" (Suffolk, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Stalin Ate My Homework (Hardcover)
Alexei's memoir of his childhood and teenage days in Liverpool doesn't have the vitriol he was most known for in the 80s, but retains his surrealist-outsider stance - a collection of stories and anecdotes more than an autobiography, but still with laugh-aloud moments.The only criticism I have of this book is its ending - the last anecdote finishes, then the book ends, with no epilogue, postscript or sense of what happens next. It's as if a second volume will follow soon and nobody wanted to spoil the surprises that'll be in that book.
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