Working all day at a lathe leaves Arthur Seaton with energy to spare in the evenings. A hard-drinking, hard-fighting young rebel of a man, he knows what he wants and he's sharp enough to get it. And before long, his carryings-on with a couple of married women is local gossip. But then one evening he meets a young girl in a pub, and Arthur's life begins to look less simple. Allan Sillitoe's classic novel of the 1950's is a story of timeless significance. The film of the novel, starring Albert Finney, transformed British cinema and was much imitated. That rarest of all finds: a genuine no-punches-pulled, unromanticised working class novel. Mr Sillitoe is a born writer, who knows his milieu and describes it with vivid, loving precision. - Daily Telegraph. His writing has real experience in it and an instinctive accuracy that never loses its touch. His book has a glow about it as though he had plugged it into some basic source of the working-class spirit. - Guardian. Miles nearer the real thing than D.H.Lawrence's mystic, brooding working-men ever came. - Sunday Express. Very outspoken and vivid. - Sunday Times. A refreshing originality. - Times Literary Supplement.