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Ham on Rye

A Novel

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Ham on Rye

Written by: Charles Bukowski
Narrated by: Christian Baskous
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About this listen

In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years, and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

©1982 Charles Bukowski (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishers Classics Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Funny City

What the critics say

"Very funny, very sad, and despite its self-congratulatory tone, honest in most of the right places. In many ways, Bukowski may have been the perfect writer to describe post-war southern California - a land of wide, flat spaces with nothing worth seeing, so you might as well vanish into yourself. In an age of conformity, Bukowski wrote about the people nobody wanted to be: the ugly, the selfish, the lonely, the mad." ( The Observer)

What listeners say about Ham on Rye

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Profile Image for Greg Kuzmich

Crack open a cheap beer and listen

Ham on Rye is like a surly, mean and drunk version of the Christmas Story or Sandlot

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Profile Image for Anonymous User

Christian Baskous brings this essential Bukowski book to life

This book is a great intro to Bukowski, unflinching, unapologetic, it traces his path through childhood to young adult through the character of Henry Cinaski early years. The narrative is brisk. The humour is dark, blunt, at times to the point of nihilistic. I definitely had some good hard laughs. Christian Baskous is great. He brings the book and the characters to life. This was a good and entertaining listen. Not for the faint of heart.

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