The Holy Man and Other Stories

The Holy Man and Other Stories
ISBN: 9780714548470
Publication Date: 5 August 2019

Above a disused bar, in a dilapidated Parisian hotel that houses an assortment of indigent, marginalized lost souls, one of the inhabitants, a mysterious, reclusive holy man, is the subject of much speculation from some of his fellow occupants and respectful reverence from others. As the tale unfolds, the dynamics of this precarious microcosm are laid bare, in a powerful portrayal of those society has forgotten.

Written when the author of Cain's Book was at the height of his creative powers and enjoying an increasing reputation in avant-garde literary circles, 'The Holy Man' is here presented with 'A Being of Distances', 'Peter Pierce' and 'A Meeting', stories which similarly tackle themes of loneliness and disenfranchisement.

About the Author

Alexander Trocchi was born on the 30th July 1925 in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. On graduating from the University of Glasgow in the early 1950s, he obtained a travelling grant that allowed him to relocate to continental Europe.

He first lived in Paris and edited the literary magazine Merlin, which published Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Christopher Logue, and Pablo Neruda. It was in Paris that he acquired a lifelong heroin addiction, which continued after moving to America and settling in New York.

In the 1960s Trocchi lived in Kensington, London where he later died of pneumonia in 1984.