Ham On Rye
Charles Bukowski
“Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you”
Available as Paperback, Paperback, eBook
2 July 2026
Bukowski’s take on the bildungsroman, an anti-coming-of-age story and his finest novel
RAW ~ REBELLIOUS ~ VULGAR
Bukowski’s take on the bildungsroman, an anti-coming-of-age story and his finest novel.
Lifelong misfit Henry Chinaski grows up downtrodden, stumbling through a world he has only ever known as hostile. Fights, failed romances and humiliations abound; Chinaski toughens up as he grows up, finding solace in books and in the bottle.
Savagely funny and profoundly human, Ham on Rye is essential reading for anyone who has ever been ready to quit – and chosen to laugh, drink or fight back instead.
“He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels”
Leonard Cohen
See more reviews
“In an age of conformity, Bukowski wrote about the people nobody wanted to be: the ugly, the selfish, the lonely, the mad”
observer
“Sometimes funny and always sad, Ham on Rye is written in an admirably hard, bare, vivid style”
times Literary Supplement
“Both powerful and, where appropriate, extremely funny”
sunday Telegraph
“Reflective, humane, tremendously evocative and absorbingly readable”
the Times
Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski, who died in 1994, was the legendary Californian writer who became famous for his semi-autobiographical books about low-life America. Novels such as Factotum and Post Office made this one-time bum, and lifelong alcoholic, rich and famous, and culminated in the making of Barfly, a major Hollywood movie based on his life starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway.
