Jack Gavaghan

"Details, impressionistic, lyrical. I became fascinated by the minute-to-minute sensations, and when I reflected, I did so repetitively and exhaustingly (often under marijuana) on the meaningless texture of the present moment, the cries of gulls, a floating spar, a shaft of sunlight, and it wasn’t; long before the sense of being alone overtook me and drained me of all hope of ever entering the city with its complicated relations, its plexus of outrageous purpose."

Written in America while Trocchi was working on a scow on the Hudson River, Cain’s Book is an extraordinary autobiographical account about a junky’s life, and an honest, raunchy, eye-opening trip through hell. Probably the most famous novel about drug addiction and the hazards and excitements of an addict’s life after Burrough’s Naked Lunch, this modern classic – which was prosecuted in Britain for obscenity in 1965 – still shocks in its frankness and is relevant to this day.

One Calder paperback copy of Alexander Trocchi's Cain's Book, comes with a free C&D zine.