THE WORKING CLASS NOVEL REBORN

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: october 2011 :: RMTnews 24 Jew Boy is a book about poverty and politics in the tumultuous world of London’s Jewish East End in the ’30s, where boxers mixed with anarchists and communists, and Yiddish actors and poets rubbed shoulders with gamblers and gangsters. All were united in their hatred of fascism, and were prepared to fight it when necessary. Yet of equal interest is the novel’s exploration of the personal lives and thwarted aspirations of young people at this time, both Jewish and non- Jewish. Class means as much to the main protagonists of this brave book as the older ties of religion and race. Author Simon Blumenfeld – born and bred in Whitechapel, working its markets as a young man – brings to life the reality of sweatshops and sweated labour, vividly portraying the exhaustion produced by long hours, unforgiving deadlines and cut-throat competition. But this a story driven by hope and a desire for change, and his descriptions of the exciting culture that existed beyond the workplace helps produce a testimony to a unique time and place that is now firmly embedded in London’s volatile history. Jew Boy is nothing less than the founding work of what went on to become a unique body of fiction, autobiography and drama – the literature of the 20th-century Jewish East End. In addition London Books is offering RMT members the same special offer on the five other titles in its Classics series – The Gilt Kid and They Drive By Night by James Curtis, Night And The City by Gerald Kersh, A Start In Life by Alan Sillitoe, and Wide Boys Never Work by Robert Westerby. To take advantage of the RMT Special Offer please go to www.london-books.co.uk/RMToffer.asp. For postal sales please write to PO Box 52849, London Books, London SW11 1SE. Name Address Titles required Amount enclosed THE WORKING CLASS NOVEL REBORN RMT has teamed up with London Books to help bring one of the greatest working-class novels of the 1930s Jew Boy back into print.