Bread with Ham

Charles Bukowski is one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, the author of more than forty books, including novels, poetry, essays, and short stories. Despite sometimes shocking naturalism, his texts are full of lyricism, even a peculiar sentimentality. "Bread with Ham" is Bukowski's most poignant novel. 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 fighting, D. H. Lawrence and Hemingway, Turgenev and Dostoevsky. Bukowski had no childhood. His father beat him severely, and he never experienced parental love. Therefore, it was crucial for the author to create a 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.