“What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.”

Imagine coming to a world where you're treated as an outsider, a misfit. A world where you don't have many friends, where your parents fail to understand you. A world where mental connection is rare. Charles Bukowski's entire career could be written down as a single story, the story of the misfits. At the center of it all, Ham on Rye is arguably the one story people will most connect with.

Twenty-odd years of a young man's life are documented in this semi-autobiographical novel. The central character, Chinaski, wanders along in his merry misanthropic way through school to reach adulthood. The story touches on themes of child abuse, bullying, animal cruelty and general alienation from society. Henry Chinaski's role of the sarcastic spectre that drifts around America is given a worthy back-story as he's shown to be frequently beaten down by society for being different.