Of Love and Hunger: With an introduction by D.J. Taylor

Maclaren-Ross’s exploits as a door-to-door salesman during the depths of the Depression provided the basis for this sometimes hilarious, sometimes melancholy romantic drama. Told in a slangy, clipped style, allied to cinematic cutting, it’s a landmark novel that has had a pervasive influence on subsequent English writing.

Book Author

Julian Maclaren-Ross (1912-64) was born in London, the youngest child of a Cuban father and an Anglo-Indian mother, and grew up in Britain and on the French Riviera. He worked as a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman before being conscripted into the army from which he later deserted. Having been discharged from the army after a traumatic spell in a psychiatric hospital, he found a job working with Dylan Thomas as a screenwriter. Invariably clad in dark glasses and an imaculate suit, augmented by a malacca cane and silver snuff-box, he soon established himself as a pivotal figure in warti...
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Book Reviews

• Peter Parker, THE READERS’ GUIDE TO TWENTIETH-CENTURY FICTION
  "Funny, unsentimental and narrated in a laconic, demotic prose, OF LOVE AND HUNGER is one of the most evocative works of the Depression."
• John Betjeman
  "I regard [it] as one of the few modern novels at the top of the first-class."
• THE SPECTATOR
  "Thanks to Penguin’s enterprising reissue, a wider readership now has the chance to savour its distinctive ambience, and to understand why Maclaren-Ross was once regarded as the rising star of the London literary scene."