Hailed in Britain as "devastating," "inspirational" ("Saturday Telegraph"), "heartbreaking" ("Saturday Telegraph Magazine") and "hilarious" ("The Spectator"), Masters presents the tragic yet honest story of a boy whose life left t...

Hailed in Britain as "devastating," "inspirational" ("Saturday Telegraph"), "heartbreaking" ("Saturday Telegraph Magazine") and "hilarious" ("The Spectator"), Masters presents the tragic yet honest story of a boy whose life left the rails early and just kept going.

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 schools-to 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 Backwards is a writer's quest to give 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 worthy of being told.