num_pages: 300
description: 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, A Life Backwards is a writer’s quest to give voice to a man who, beneath his forbidding exterior, has a message for us that every life–even the most chaotic and disreputable–is a story worthy of being told.
language: English
title: Stuart: A Life Backwards
titlecomplete: Stuart: A Life Backwards
genres: British Literature, Autobiography, Mental Health, Psychology, Biography Memoir, Biography, Contemporary, Memoir, Book Club, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 4687
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Guardian First Book Award, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Biography, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Hawthornden Prize, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Autobiography, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction
publisher: Delacorte Press