Down and Out in England and Italy

A wry, filthy, and unputdownable look at class and national identity today.

Alberto Prunetti arrives in the UK, the twenty-something year old son of a Tuscan factory worker who has never left home before. With only broken English, his wits, and an obsession with the work of George Orwell to guide him, he sets about looking for a job and navigating his new home.

In between slaving in pizzerias and cleaning toilets up and down the country, he finds his place among the British precariat. His comrades form a polyglot underclass, among them an ex-addict cook, a cleaner in love with opera, an elderly Shakespearean actor, Turks impersonating Neapolitans to serve pizzas, and a cast of petty criminals 'resting' between bigger jobs.

Stuck between a past haunted by Thatcher and a future dominated by Brexit, Down and Out in England and Italy is a hilarious and poignant snapshot of life on the margins in modern day Britain.





'A hallucinatory and savage account of modern working life. Both surreal and instantly recognisable.'
-Jeff Sparrow, author of No Way But This and Trigger Warnings

'Raw, mischievous, funny, and vulgar ... engaging.'
-John Mulqueen, Irish Examiner

'Alberto Prunetti's scatalogical, sociological, phantasmagorical, novel Down and Out in England in Italy might have George Orwell spinning in his grave and chuckling in recognition at the kitchen workers, toilet cleaners, and children of miners and steel workers ... A deep poignancy here too.'
-Anthony Cartwright, author of How I Killed Margaret Thatcher