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The Glass Cage by John Healy
£12.99
Available
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9781789652598
Published:
21 Aug 2025
Format:
Paperback
Dimensions:
198mm
Weight:
0.000kgs
Author:
'A master storyteller with an ear, an eye and a voice that should be the envy of many men with weightier reputations' Daniel Day-Lewis on The Grass Arena With imaginative prose and startling imagery, Healy takes us on a journey where he first works in a late-night cafe serving whores, pimps, druggies, window-ledgers, handbag snatchers, narks, and the odd psychopath. Situated at the dim end of the counter at the furthest corner from God's light on earth, he plans his escape and ends up in a world more treacherous and dangerous than he could ever have imagined. In this world of middle-class literature, living hand to mouth, he writes The Grass Arena. To become suddenly famous in an unfamiliar world of power and privilege was completely disorienting. He finds himself thrown into unpredictable situations that call for a tact where he was more used to situations where people achieved their aims through brutality. The Glass Cage is an unrepen
'A master storyteller with an ear, an eye and a voice that should be the envy of many men with weightier reputations' Daniel Day-Lewis on The Grass Arena
With imaginative prose and startling imagery, Healy takes us on a journey where he first works in a late-night cafe serving whores, pimps, druggies, window-ledgers, handbag snatchers, narks, and the odd psychopath. Situated at the dim end of the counter at the furthest corner from God's light on earth, he plans his escape and ends up in a world more treacherous and dangerous than he could ever have imagined. In this world of middle-class literature, living hand to mouth, he writes The Grass Arena. To become suddenly famous in an unfamiliar world of power and privilege was completely disorienting. He finds himself thrown into unpredictable situations that call for a tact where he was more used to situations where people achieved their aims through brutality.
The Glass Cage is an unrepentant account of a life few of us could imagine. A worthy sequel to The Grass Arena, it is John Healy's crowning achievement.
About the Author: John Healy was born in London in 1942. After a troubled childhood he became a boxer and according to his trainer, the great George Francis, 'Healy was a stylist with concussive power in both hands'. He was tipped for the top, unfortunately in the end it was drink that carried the knockout blow. Already an alcoholic by his late teens he was pressed into the army and after getting drunk and resisting the guard he was transferred to a penal battalion in a military prison. Discharged onto the street, he spent fifteen violent years in a wino jungle. During one of his prison sentences another prisoner Harry Collins (known as 'The Brighton Fox') taught Healy to play chess. Showing a remarkable aptitude for the game he stopped drinking and won ten major chess tournaments. In 1986, living hand-to-mouth on a council estate at King's Cross, he wrote his 'savage masterpiece,' The Grass Arena which won the PEN Ackerley award (Europe's top award for literary memoir) and was described on Radio 4 by Matthew Sweet as 'one of the great works of the twentieth century.' The book was made into a film (in which he was played by Mark Rylance) and between them they have a clutch of major national and international awards. The Glass Cage is his second volume of memoir.
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| First Item | 2 Items & Over | |
|---|---|---|
| UK | £3.75 | £5.00 |
| EU | £15.00 | £30.00 |
| USA & Canada | £30.00 | £50.00 |
| Rest of the World | £45.00 | £60.00 |
| Collect in Store | free | free |
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