Poverty Safari : Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass

Why are the rich getting richer while the poor only get poorer? How is it possible that in a wealthy, civilised democracy cruelty & inequality are perpetuated by our own public services? And how come, if all the best people are in all the top jobs, Britain is such an unmitigated bin fire? Writer, performer & activist Darren McGarvey takes us on a journey through a divided Britain in search of answers. Here, our latter-day Orwell exposes the true scale of Britain’s social ills & reveals why our current political class, those tasked with bringing solutions, are so distanced from our lived experience that they are the last people you’d want fighting your corner. Rathbone Folio Prize:The Judges said:This dynamic, powerful & galvanising book about the state of the nations tells it as it is, then tells it like it could be. "Savage, wise, and witty . . . It is hard to think of a more timely, powerful, or necessary book."—J. K. Rowling International Bestseller! For readers of Hillbilly Elegy and Evicted , the Orwell Prize–winner that helps us all understand Brexit, Donald Trump, and the connection between poverty and the rise of tribalism in the United Kingdom, in the US, and around the world. Darren McGarvey has experienced poverty and its devastations firsthand. He grew up in a community where violence was a form of currency and has lived through addiction, abuse, and homelessness. He knows why people from deprived communities feel angry and unheard. And he wants to explain . . . So he invites you to come along on a safari of sorts. But not the kind where the wildlife is surveyed from a safe distance. His vivid, visceral, and cogently argued book—part memoir and part polemic—takes us inside the experience of extreme poverty and its stresses to show how the pressures really feel and how hard their legacy is to overcome. Arguing that both the political left and right misunderstand poverty as it is actually lived, McGarvey sets forth what everybody—including himself—could do to change things. Razor-sharp, fearless, and brutally honest, Poverty Safari offers unforgettable insight into conditions in modern Britain, including what led to Brexit—and, beyond that, into issues of inequality, tribalism, cultural anxiety, identity politics, the poverty industry, and the resentment, anger, and feelings of exclusion and being left behind that have fueled right-wing populism and the rise of ethno-nationalism. For readers of Hillbilly Elegy and Evicted , the Orwell Prize–winner and Sunday Times bestseller that J. K. Rowling has called "savage, wise, and witty . . . It is hard to think of a more timely, powerful, or necessary book." Darren McGarvey has experienced poverty and its devastations firsthand. He grew up in a community where violence was a form of currency and has lived through addiction, abuse, and homelessness. He knows why people from deprived communities feel angry and unheard. And he wants to explain . . . So he invites you to come along on a safari of sorts. But not the kind where the wildlife is surveyed from a safe distance. His vivid, visceral, and cogently argued book—part memoir and part polemic—takes us inside the experience of extreme poverty and its stresses to show how the pressures really feel and how hard their legacy is to overcome. Arguing that both the political left and right misunderstand poverty as it...