John King (author)

Last updated

John King
Born1960 (age 63–64)
Occupation
  • Author
  • publisher
  • editor
LanguageEnglish
NationalityBritish
Notable works
  • The Football Factory
  • Headhunters
  • England Away
  • Human Punk
  • White Trash
  • The Prison House
  • Skinheads
  • The Liberal Politics of Adolf Hitler
  • Slaughterhouse Prayer
Website
john-king-author.co.uk

John King (born 1960) is an English writer best known for his novels which mostly deal in the more rebellious elements driving the country's culture. His stories carry strong social and political undercurrents, and his work has been widely translated abroad. He has written articles and reviews for alternative and mainstream publications, edits the fiction journal Verbal, and is the co-owner of the London Books publishing house.

Contents

Career

Novels

King's 1996 debut novel, The Football Factory , [1] was an instant word-of-mouth success, selling around 300,000 copies in the UK. The book was subsequently turned into a play by Brighton Theatre Events, with German and Dutch adaptations following. A film adaptation appeared in 2004. Directed by Nick Love and starring Danny Dyer, Dudley Sutton, and Frank Harper, its UK DVD sales passed the two-million mark.

Prior to the novel's release, an early version of the chapter "Millwall Away" appeared in Rebel Inc. This magazine also published early writing by Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner, and all three would subsequently join the Jonathan Cape publishing house. [2] [3] King was producing the fanzine Two Sevens [4] , and Rebel Inc editor Kevin Williamson's fiction was featured, along with interviews with Welsh and the novelist Stewart Home. Following its publication, extracts from The Football Factory featured in issue 59 of the New York literary journal Grand Street.

Two more novels — Headhunters and England Away—develop the themes of alienation and belonging found in The Football Factory, and the three books form a loose trilogy. Street newspaper The Big Issue described Headhunters as: "Sexy, dirty, violent, sad and funny; in fact, it has just about everything you could want from a book on contemporary working-class life in London".

King's fourth novel, Human Punk (2000), draws on the emergence and evolution of punk rock as it tells the story of four boyhood friends; it is set in and around the town of Slough.

White Trash (2002), which the author has described as "a defence of the NHS", drew the following praise from Alan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning : "Complete and unique, all stitched up and marvellous, the two sides of the equation brought together, realistic yet philosophical". In The Independent , Mat Coward wrote: "The cumulative effect of King's style, with streams of monologue, alternating between Ruby and Jeffreys, is astonishingly powerful in its detail and depth... This is an immensely timely and necessary book: stylish, witty and passionate. It's about time someone slapped the smugness from the face of broadsheet Britain".

The one novel of King's to be set entirely outside England, The Prison House (2004), takes place in an old castle prison in an unnamed country. Brian Keenan wrote: "With a brutal imagination The Prison House takes you to a place where angels fear to tread. Go there and be redeemed". Boyd Tonkin, writing in The Independent, said: "In this literary jail, the ghost of Kafka shares a cell with the shade of Burroughs".

Skinheads (2008) [5] is set in the same landscapes as Human Punk and White Trash, and while the three books feature different characters, they effectively combine to provide an overview of forty years of British culture and politics as The Satellite Cycle. In his review of the novel, Charles Shaar Murray stated: "John King's achievement since his debut has been enormous: creating a modern, proletarian English literature at once genuinely modern, genuinely proletarian, genuinely literature". [6] The US edition of Human Punk carries the following quote by Lars Frederiksen of the American punk band Rancid: "John King: the face in our subculture who lives what he writes".

The Liberal Politics of Adolf Hitler (2016) takes place fifty years in the future. [7] The Morning Star wrote: "King steadily constructs, layer by layer, an increasingly believable world where a combination of intrusive technology, ruthlessness and effectively bland public relations has ensured the domination of the majority's thoughts and actions." Author David Peace called it "One of the best, if not the best, bravest and most exciting books I've read in years—needed saying, needed writing and needs to be read".

Slaughterhouse Prayer (2018) [8] is an animal rights story based around three stages in the life of the main character, and how he responds to the meat and dairy industries as a boy, youth, and man. TV producer/author Ben Richards described the novel as "A masterpiece in the tradition of Upton Sinclair and Victor Hugo". Poet and author Benjamin Zephaniah said: "Slaughterhouse Prayer is a fiction that reveals many truths. Written from a compassionate place, it is sensitive, thoughtful, and there is nothing like it out there".

King’s tenth novel, London Country (2023), develops themes from his earlier Satellite Cycle titles Human Punk, White Trash, and Skinheads. It is set in the same areas in and around Slough, Uxbridge, and Outer London, and charts the political, social, and cultural shifts of 2015, 2017, and 2019, as experienced by those books' main characters Joe Martin, Ruby James, and Ray English. The original focus of those books is brought forward, namely, the repetition of trauma and evolution of punk, the NHS and Spiritualist Church, the skinhead scene, and family bonds. [9]

Other writing and activities

In 2007, King set up the independent publishing company London Books with Martin Knight.

King has written for a range of newspapers, magazines, and fanzines over the years, and has contributed to New Statesman in the UK, la Repubblica in Italy, and Le Monde in France. His small-press publication Verbal [10] publishes new fiction and includes an author interview in each issue.

In 2020, the novella The Beasts of Brussels was published as part of The Seal Club, a three-piece collection that also includes The Providers by Irvine Welsh and Those Darker Sayings by Alan Warner. A second novella, Grand Union (2023), appears in The View From Poacher's Hill, which also features work by Welsh and Warner.

Bibliography

Novels

Novellas

Short stories

Nonfiction

Introductions

Critical studies

Related Research Articles

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<i>White Trash</i> (novel) 2001 novel by John King

White Trash is the fifth novel by English author John King, first published in 2001 by Jonathan Cape. The paperback edition of the book, released by Vintage, carries the following quote by Alan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, on its cover: "Complete and unique, all stitched up and marvellous, the two sides of the equation brought together, realistic yet philosophical." The quote also appears on the US edition of the novel (2016), which includes an introduction by the author—"From Cradle to Grave".

<i>Skinheads</i> (novel) 2008 novel by John King

Skinheads is the seventh novel by British author John King. It was first published in 2008 by Jonathan Cape and subsequently by Vintage. Set in the same new-town and Outer London hinterland as two of King's previous books, Human Punk (2000) and White Trash (2001), it forms a loose trilogy, The Satellite Cycle. The book has been translated and released in a number of countries, among them France, Italy, and Russia.

<i>England Away</i> 1998 novel by John King

England Away is the third novel by John King, first published by Jonathan Cape in 1998 and subsequently by Vintage. The final part of The Football Factory Trilogy, it follows characters from The Football Factory and Headhunters as they come together and head into Europe for an England football match against Germany in Berlin.

<i>The Liberal Politics of Adolf Hitler</i> 2016 novel by John King

The Liberal Politics of Adolf Hitler is the eighth novel by English author John King, published in 2016. Three essays led to its release: The Left Wing Case for Leaving the EU, Flying the Flag, and The People Versus the Elite (Penguin). A supporter of British withdrawal from the European Union, King was previously on the advisory council of the People's Pledge group and appeared on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions at the time of the book's launch. Author David Peace has described the novel as "One of the best, if not the best, bravest and most exciting books I've read in years – needed saying, needed writing and needs to be read."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Two Sevens</span>

Two Sevens was an English small press magazine of the 1990s which focused on popular culture, in particular punk and alternative music, street literature and politics. It was founded and co-edited by Football Factory author John King and the journalist Peter Mason.

References

  1. ↑ "Review: The Football Factory". simonsellars.com. 14 April 1999. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
  2. ↑ "Welsh.Warner.King...in The Seal Club". thecommonbreath.com. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
  3. ↑ "Book review: The Seal Club, by Alan Warner, Irvine Welsh and John King". scotsman.com. 12 November 2020. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
  4. ↑ "Two Sevens – British Library".
  5. ↑ "human punk: john king interviewed". 3ammagazine.com. 2 March 2008. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
  6. ↑ "Skinheads, by John King" . independent.co.uk. 28 March 2008. Archived from the original on 13 June 2022. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
  7. ↑ "factory records: an interview with john king". 3ammagazine.com. 23 May 2016. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
  8. ↑ "til the pigs come round". 3ammagazine.com. 30 November 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
  9. ↑ "London Classic...Talking City Literature with John King". thecommonbreath.com. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
  10. ↑ "London Books". Archived from the original on 6 September 2018. Retrieved 10 May 2019.
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