Stuart: A Life Backwards

The winner of the Guardian First Book Award that reinvented the biographic form. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics'' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. ''Stuart: A Life Backwards'' expanded the possibilities of what a biography could be: the stories it could tell, and how it could tell them. It is about a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer (''a middle-class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander''), and Stuart Shorter, a thief, hostage-taker, psycho and street raconteur. Told backwards - Stuart''s idea - it starts with a deeply troubled thirty-two-year-old stepping out in front of the 11.15 train from London to King''s Lynn, and ends with a ''happy-go-lucky little boy'' of twelve. Compelling, humane and funny, it is as extraordinary and unexpected as the life it describes.