Review He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels -- LEONARD COHEN In an age of conformity, Bukowski wrote about the people nobody wanted to be: the ugly, the selfish, the lonely, the mad - Observer Sometimes funny and always sad, Ham on Rye is written in an admirably hard, bare, vivid style - Times Literary Supplement Both powerful and, where appropriate, extremely funny - Sunday Telegraph Reflective, humane, tremendously evocative and absorbingly readable - The Times A scorching account of a childhood, adolescence, a life of ugliness, pain, escape, alcohol, loneliness. Often it is's funny - often it's disturbing - Ham on Rye is a powerful book -- RODDY DOYLE A Laureate of American low life - Time This great novel is Bukowski's supremely honest account of a twisted childhood -- Howard Sounes - author of Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life The Thing about Bukowski is, when you read what he has to say, he's right -- SEAN PENN Raunchy yet lyrical, occasionally hilarious while abysmally sad - San Francisco Chronicle We all knew Bukowski was a tough guy, but who would have guessed that even the grave could not shut him up? -- BILLY COLLINS There is a real poignancy in the people encountered in Bukowski's work - New York Times Book Review Book Description The autobiographical coming-of-age modern classic by one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century About the Author Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.