Awaydays
Kevin Sampson
Available as Paperback
A powerful portrait of a time and culture, of late 70s to early 80s and football hooligan gangs, of working-class lives and men left abandoned by Thatcher’s Britain
I am the product of a blank generation. I live for kicks. I live for me.
Birkenhead, 1979. The Pack, a violent mob of Stanley-knife-wielding football hooligans, follow their team across the Northern wastelands to their away games – earning a reputation as the nastiest crew in the Third Division. For the young working-class men with no way out, their lives revolve around the fashion, the music and the mayhem. But for two of them, Carty and Elvis, escaping towards a different future might mean leaving each other behind.
Quickly gaining cult status when first published, Awaydays is both a powerful evocation of a time and a culture, and a poignant coming-of-age story about finding your identity, escaping your circumstances and the unspoken intensity of male friendships.
“Sampson is a fine storyteller … Nasty stuff, brilliantly told”
guardian
See more reviews
“The dark side of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch”
nme
“Avoids the tiresome pitfalls of hard man posturing, focusing instead on that great working-class bromance of following your team away”
Irvine Welsh
“An acutely observed rite-of-passage story … a time and a generation which has too often been reduced to cliché”
independent On Sunday
“A gritty novel with wit and humour at every turn”
maxim
Kevin Sampson
Kevin Sampson is a British novelist and screenwriter, best known for his novels Awaydays (1998), Powder (1999), Stars Are Stars (2006) and The Killing Pool (2014). He began his career in the music industry by writing gig reviews for NME in the 80s and has written for i-D, Arena, Sounds, Time Out and the Observer. He was part of Produce Records, who had a string of Top 40 hits in the 90s including The Farm’s ‘Groovy Train’ and ‘All Together Now’. His screenwriting credits include Anne (ITV, 2022), The Hunt for Raoul Moat (2023) and the film adaption of Awaydays (2009).
@ksampsonwriter
