Stuart: A Life Backwards

In this extraordinary book, Alexander Masters has created a moving portrait of a troubled man, an unlikely friendship, and a desperate world few ever see. A gripping who-done-it journey back in time, it begins with Masters meeting a drunken Stuart lying on a sidewalk in Cambridge, England, and leads through layers of hell...back through crimes and misdemeanors, prison and homelessness, suicide attempts, violence, drugs, juvenile halls and special schoolsto expose the smiling, gregarious thirteen-year-old boy who was Stuart before his long, sprawling, dangerous fall. Shocking, inspiring, and hilarious by turns,Stuart: A Life Backwardsis a writer's quest to give voice to a man who, beneath his forbidding exterior, has a message for us all: that every lifeeven the most chaotic and disreputableis a story worthy of being told. From the Hardcover edition.

ALEXANDER MASTERS was born in New York in 1965 and studied physics and mathematics in London and Cambridge. For the last five years he has worked in hostels for the homeless and run a street newspaper. He has also been an agony aunt, a travel writer, an illustrator, and a bedspread salesman.


From the Hardcover edition.