The Gospel Singer

The poor town of Enigma, Georgia awaits the return of its most famous son - the Gospel Singer. With the voice of an angel and, it is said, the touch of a healer, he is fresh from the cover of LIFE and the cheers of the Carnegie Hall crowd. And yet, for all his fame, something drives him back to his obscure past, to small-town idolization and half-forgotten deeds. There, before the crowds that have gathered at his feet, he will reveal the cruelty at the heart of his act ... 
 
The Gospel Singer, Harry Crews' extraordinary debut novel, is at once a surreal investigation into the nature of the American South, as well as an intricate mediation on faith and its place in the community.

The Biography of a Place

A Childhood

1935, Bacon County, Georgia. The bite of the Great Depression was beginning to be felt in the rest of America, but its teeth had been in Bacon County for years. Here one of America's most original storytellers, Harry Crews, was born in a sharecropper's cabin at the end of a dirt road. A Childhood is his memoir of that time - his first years of life - and that place: the poor soil and the sickness, the blood feuds and the faith healers, the ghosts and the shopping catalogues. 
 
A profound vision of the rural South that resounds with the violence of poverty and the tenderness of kinship, A Childhood is a true American classic.

Harry Crews

S. A. Cosby

A good old-fashioned morality play with drama and style to spare&hellip;

Crews, one of the most inventive practitioners in modern American letters, returns to a milieu that has long fascinated him: the seedy world of fighters and musclemen ... A brilliant specialist in black humour, Crews delivers the goods once again. His deadpan prose style is uncannily effective in meshing the surreal and everyday life. While the characters are mainly freaks, they come across so directly, often with an affecting sweetness, that they acquire extraordinary vibrancy. Crews is a modernist all right, but he isn't a facile one. The moral here and elsewhere in his work is old-fashioned: to thine own self be true.

Crews stalks the ring in near peak form, a master of storytelling fundamentals - pacing, character motivation, atmospheric details - yet armed with surprise punches. Don&rsquo;t expect just a ring-side seat &hellip; You don&rsquo;t merely read Harry Crews. You climb into the ring with him and go fifteen rounds &hellip; Score one for Harry Crews.

Characterization, incidents and tone are all beautifully sustained in this unusual book.

A favourite of long-time Harry Crews fans, The Knockout Artist (1988) portrays Eugene Talmadge Biggs, a young boxer from rural Georgia whose champion rise is diverted by a vulnerability, or gift, for knocking himself unconscious. 
 
As he begins to exploit his talents, the notorious Knockout Artist journeys into the New Orleans underworld and meets characters who have long since checked their morals at the door. The unforgettable climax shows Crews at his virtuoso best, when Eugene confronts his truth, and sets out to claim his freedom and win his own self-respect.

Harry Crews

Praise for The Knockout Artist

A good old-fashioned morality play with drama and style to spare…

Crews, one of the most inventive practitioners in modern American letters, returns to a milieu that has long fascinated him: the seedy world of fighters and musclemen ... A brilliant specialist in black humour, Crew ...

Crews stalks the ring in near peak form, a master of storytelling fundamentals - pacing, character motivation, atmospheric details - yet armed with surprise punches. Don’t expect just a ring-side seat … ...

A good old-fashioned morality play with drama and style to spare…

Crews, one of the most inventive practitioners in modern American letters, returns to a milieu that has long fascinated him: the seedy world of fighters and musclemen ... A brilliant specialist in black humour, Crew ...

Crews stalks the ring in near peak form, a master of storytelling fundamentals - pacing, character motivation, atmospheric details - yet armed with surprise punches. Don’t expect just a ring-side seat … ...

A good old-fashioned morality play with drama and style to spare…

Crews, one of the most inventive practitioners in modern American letters, returns to a milieu that has long fascinated him: the seedy world of fighters and musclemen ... A brilliant specialist in black humour, Crew ...

Crews stalks the ring in near peak form, a master of storytelling fundamentals - pacing, character motivation, atmospheric details - yet armed with surprise punches. Don’t expect just a ring-side seat … ...

Books by Harry Crews

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