Little Boy

‘This isn’t a book: it’s a reckoning … Utterly extraordinary.’ Guardian

Little Boy was quite lost. He had no idea who he was or where he had come from … Grown Boy came into his own voice and let loose his word-horde pent-up within him.

From growing up as an orphan in 1920s New York, to serving in the Navy at the D-Day landings in Normandy, to a vagabond life drinking in Parisian cafes, to befriending America’s greatest counter-cultural writers, Little Boy has seen it all. This is the story of one man’s extraordinary life, and the madness of the century that witnessed it – a story steeped in the exhilarating energy of the Beats, a magical torrent of language that gleams with Walt Whitman’s visionary spirit. Above all, this is the literary last will and testament of the iconic publisher and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti: not only a meditation on his 99 years on the planet, rich in wisdom, emotion, and memories, but an inspiring reflection on what our future might hold.