A wry, intelligent, and unputdownable look at class and national identity today.

Alberto Prunetti arrives in the UK, the twenty-something-year-old son of a Tuscan factory worker who has never left home before. With only broken English, his wits, and an obsession with the work of George Orwell to guide him, he sets about looking for a job and navigating his new home.

In between long, hot shifts in pizzerias and cleaning toilets up and down the country, he finds his place among the British precariat. His comrades form a polyglot underclass, among them an ex-addict cook, a cleaner in love with opera, an elderly Shakespearean actor, Turks impersonating Neapolitans to serve pizzas, and a cast of petty criminals ‘resting’ between bigger jobs.

Stuck between a past haunted by Thatcher and a future dominated by Brexit, Down and Out in England and Italy is a hilarious and poignant snapshot of life on the margins in modern-day Britain.

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‘Raw, mischievous, funny, and vulgar … engaging.’

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‘Humour and sarcasm abound in Prunetti’s slim, fast-paced account, but these do not lessen the anger and poignancy of his analysis of a society in which the workers are sacrificed at the altar of profit.’

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‘A very sweary, grizzled old Italian Lefty … The cast of characters around him is often superbly drawn.’

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‘Increasingly imaginative, experimental, and polyphonic’

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‘Bitterly funny, lyrical, and often scatological … a foulmouthed, hallucinatory, and often surreal account of the contemporary landscape of class.’

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‘An urgent examination of class in a 21st-century context.’

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‘The book has a nightmarish Lovecraftian undertone — a creative ploy to underline the unspeakable horrors that workers today face under capitalism.’

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‘A working-class story full of humour, misery, and solidarity.’

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‘An emphasis on language, on dark humour, and critical observations makes [Down and Out in England and Italy] an enjoyable read.’

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‘Poignant ... in the writing of his experiences, Prunetti finally finds his salvation, offering his readers some deeply uncomfortable glimpses into a world that it’s far cheerier not to contemplate too closely while tucking into that delicious pizza.’