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First published in the UK in 1975 and here in Picador reprint is the hard hitting master stylist of American letters. Lester Ballard, a violent, solitary and introverted young backwoodsman dispossessed on his ancestral land is released from jail and allowed to haunt the hill country of East Tennessee, preying on the population with his strange lusts. The author transforms commonplace brushes with humanity in homesteads, stores and in the woods into stunning scenes of the comic and the grotesque with the anti-hero's deviant and shocking acts, yet the reader still feels a degree of pity for him as society continually rejects him. As the story hurtles toward its unforgettable conclusion, it depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humour and characteristic lyrical brilliance. By the author of The Road and The Border Trilogy, this is a taut, chilling novel that plumbs the depths of human degradation. 186pp, paperback.