"Stuart,  a life backwards" is the story of an extraordinary friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator and a chaotic knife-wielding beggar whom he gets to know during a campaign to free two charity workers from prison.  In this funny, despairing, uplifting and brilliantly written biography, Alexander Masters has created a moving portrait of a troubled man, an unlikely friendship, and a desperate world few ever see.  Shocking, inspiring, and hilarious by turns, this most original book gives voice to a man who, beneath his forbidding exterior, has a message for us all: that every life – even the most chaotic and disreputable – is a story worth telling.
Stuart: a life backwards won the Guardian First Book Award and an Arts Council Writers' Award and is now published in Italy by Fazi.
Alex 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. At the British Council he will read from and talk about Stuart; the story is based on the biography of a man the author used to know, and that he describes as "a thief, hostage taker, psycho and sociopathic street raconteur, my spy on how the chaotic underclass spend their troubled days at the beginning of the 21st century: a man with an important life."

"Alexander, sort it out - you're the writer. I just done the living"
Stuart Shorter

Date:

6 March 2007, h. 18:30

Venue:    Rome

British Council, Via Quattro Fontane 20

Information:

tel. 06 47814206