In this extraordinary book, Alexander Masters has created a moving portrait of a troubled man, an unlikely friendship, and a desperate world few ever see. A gripping who-done-it journey back in time, it begins with Masters meeting a drunken Stuart lying on a sidewalk in Cambridge, England, and leads through layers of hell…back through crimes and misdemeanors, prison and homelessness, suicide attempts, violence, drugs, juvenile halls and special schools–to expose the smiling, gregarious thirteen-year-old boy who was Stuart before his long, sprawling, dangerous fall.

Shocking, inspiring, and hilarious by turns, Stuart: A Life Backwards is a writer’s quest to give voice to a man who, beneath his forbidding exterior, has a message for us all: that every life–even the most chaotic and disreputable–is a story worthy of being told.

亞曆山大•馬斯特斯（Alexander Masters, 1965— ），英國傳記作傢，現居英國劍橋，曾在一傢流浪漢收容所工作過。《倒帶人生》（2005）是其處女作，該書榮獲《衛報》“第一書奬”，並被英國廣播公司（BBC）製作成電影，由湯姆•哈迪和本尼迪剋特•康伯巴奇飾演劇中角色。他的第二部書《我地下室裏的天纔》（2011）是關於住在他所住公寓地下室裏的一位天纔數學傢西濛•菲利浦斯•諾頓的生平。