Bread with Ham

Charles Bukowski — one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, author of more than forty books, including novels, poetry, essays, and short stories. Despite the sometimes shocking naturalism, his texts are full of lyricism, even a peculiar... sentimentality. «Bread with Ham» — the most poignant novel by Bukowski. Like «The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn» and «The Catcher in the Rye», it is written from the perspective of an impressionable child dealing with the duplicity, pretentiousness, and vanity of the adult world. A child gradually discovering alcohol and women, gambling and brawling, D. H. Lawrence and Hemingway, Turgenev and Dostoevsky. Bukowski had no childhood. His father brutally beat him, and he never experienced parental love. Therefore, it was very important for the author to create the coming-of-age novel «Bread with Ham». It is written from the perspective of an impressionable child dealing with the duplicity and vanity of the adult world.