John Healy and I grew up in the same London neighborhood. We attended the same elementary school. He is nearly twenty years older than me, and during my childhood years he would have been living rough on the streets and in the parks near where I lived. He would have been one of the “winos”, “down-and-outs”, or “tramps” that my parents warned me to avoid on my way to and from school, part of that frightening underclass we saw all the time, begging, fighting, passed out in doorways.

The Grass Arena is the story of Healy’s early years, but mostly of the long period he spent as a chronic and homeless alcoholic. It is a terrible tale, one filled with violence, cruelty, and misery. But this is no self-pitying “misery memoir”. To find its stylistic antecedent you have to go to a work like Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London – part autobiography, part reportage, part social criticism.

Unlike the lives of thousands of others like him, Healy’s life didn’t end in tragedy. During one of his many short stays in prison, Healy discovered chess. It gripped his imagination and gave him the strength to relinquish alcohol. He mastered the game and along the way found the words to tell his story. And what an unforgettable story it is.