Fowlers End

In the dirtiest, poorest, most woebegone corner of London is Fowlers End, one of the most godforsaken spots on the face of the earth. It is here that Daniel Laverock, starving and penniless at the height of the Great Depression, takes the only job he can find: manager of the Pantheon Theater, a dingy old silent cinema owned by Sam Yudenow. Yudenow, an incorrigible swindler and one of the greatest comic grotesques in English literature, at first seems merely an amusing old fool, but Laverock...