Winner of the 2010 Non-Fiction National Book Award
Patti Smith’s definitive memoir is an evocative, honest and moving coming-of-age story of her extraordinary relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe

‘Sharp, elegiac and finely crafted’ Sunday Times
‘Terrifically evocative … The most spellbinding and diverting portrait of funky-but-chic New York in the late ’60s and ’70s that any alumnus has committed to print’ New York Times
‘Render, harrowing, often hilarious’ Vogue

In 1967, a chance meeting between two young people led to a romance and a lifelong friendship that would carry each to international success never dreamed of. The backdrop is Brooklyn, Chelsea Hotel, Max’s Kansas City, Scribner’s Bookstore, Coney Island, Warhol’s Factory and the whole city resplendent. Among their friends, literary lights, musicians and artists such as Harry Smith, Bobby Neuwirth, Allen Ginsberg, Sandy Daley, Sam Shepherd, William Burroughs, etc. It was a heightened time politically and culturally; the art and music worlds exploding and colliding. In the midst of all this two kids made a pact to always care for one another. Scrappy, romantic, committed to making art, they prodded and provided each other with faith and confidence during the hungry years–the days of cous-cous and lettuce soup.

Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. Beautifully written, this is a profound portrait of two young artists, often hungry, sated only by art and experience. And an unforgettable portrait of New York, her rich and poor, hustlers and hellions, those who made it and those whose memory lingers near.

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‘Funny, smart and heartbreaking. Incredible… go listen to it or read it.’ Robbie Williams

‘In what might be the most entertaining music memoir since Elton John’s Me, Boy George’s Karma weaves a meandering path through several decades’ of fame, success, crash and burn, before delivering him into a kind of autumnal meditative serenity… This is George O’Dowd in all his exhausting glory.’ Observer

‘Joyously indiscreet’ Daily Mail

‘I went to a lot of trouble to create Boy George and then I went through a whole battle for years about not wanting to be him. But now I enjoy and embrace it in a way that I wasn’t able to as a young person…. I’m finally learning to be George Alan O’Dowd from Eltham.’

Karma is the definitive autobiography from the incomparable Grammy, Brit and Ivor Novello award-winning lead singer of Culture Club and LGBTQ+ vanguard: Boy George. Told in his inimitable style, Karma tells the story of the charismatic frontman – the drama, the music, his journey of addiction and recovery, surviving prison, meeting legends like David Bowie, Prince and Madonna, and the highs and lows of a life lived in the spotlight and in the headlines.

This is the explosive and searingly honest account of Boy George’s life as a child growing up in sixties London, coming out to his Irish Catholic family and exploring his sexuality through the hedonism of the seventies – the glam rock and punk rock revolution that birthed Culture Club – and the heydays of the nineties, to finally embracing the man and artist that he is today. With all the humour, honesty, sarcasm (and hats!) that you’d expect, Karma gives us a unique insight into Boy George’s incredible story and the true evolution of a music icon.

‘Culture Club is always going to be one of those lovers I go back to. I’ve railed against it and that Boy George character I created. For years I convinced myself I was a creature of habit, unchangeable, immovable. But eventually you have to look in the mirror. Not looking for spots, looking for something deeper. Why the hell am I here? I would say life is the point of life.’

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