Tales of Ordinary Madness

Henry Chinaski — Bukowski’s alter ego — wanders through the bars and rooming houses of Los Angeles, working post office jobs and menial labour, drinking heavily, loving badly, and observing the world around him with the merciless precision that is Bukowski’s primary gift. These stories are not comfortable, and they are not meant to be: they are dispatches from the lower depths of American life, written by someone who lived there rather than visiting, and the honesty of that position is what makes them literature rather than merely transgressive.

The essential Bukowski short story collection — the work that established him as one of the defining voices of American underground literature. Published by Virgin Books.