Hubert Selby, Jr. Volgorde van de boeken (chronologisch)

Driven to desperation by the hand the world has dealt him, a man attempts to buy a gun to end his life. But a computer malfunction causes a delay with the gun license: a life-saving event that sees the man questioning why he should die when there are so many others he believes should go before him.

In dieser moralischen Erzählung zieht sich ein Mann vom Rand des Suizids zurück, als sein Antrag auf den Kauf einer Waffe, um sich selbst zu erschießen, durch einen unerwarteten Computerfehler verzögert wird. Gezwungen, zu warten, bis der Fehler behoben ist, beginnt er, seine Position zu überdenken, und beschließt schließlich, anstatt sein Leben gewaltsam wegzuwerfen, seine Zeit und Mühe darauf zu verwenden, all jene zu beseitigen, die seiner Meinung nach sterben sollten. Zunächst zielt er auf einen Bürokraten der Veteranenverwaltung ab und entwickelt eine geniale Methode, ihn spurlos zu ermorden. Sein Plan ist ein erschreckender und rachsüchtiger Erfolg, und der Mann beginnt mit neuer Lebensfreude eine fröhliche Mordserie, nachdem er den wahren Sinn seiner Existenz gefunden hat. Aber wessen Stimme ist die andere? Diejenige, die so weise und mitfühlend und mit so offensichtlicher Zustimmung alles kommentiert, was der Mann tut? „Wartezeit“ mag keine Antworten auf die Bedeutung des Lebens bieten, stellt aber sicherlich viele interessante neue Fragen.

Set in the Bronx, this novel tells the story of Bobby, a young black man, and his Hispanic friend, Maria. Their lives together are irrevocably shattered when a vicious Hispanic street gang attack leaves Bobby savagely beaten and Maria lying in a hospital bed with a badly burned face.

Fat Phil can't lose at dice, even when his friends turn nasty and he's trying his hardest; a salesman finds success comes from fortune cookie mottoes, but panics when these mottoes turn against him; and, a commuter finds himself obsessed with a plain young woman on his train, at the expense of his marriage.

Paradoxia contains frank and often shocking confessions. Lydia Lunch relays in graphic detail a predator's diary, revealing the true psychic repercussions of sexual misadventure. From New York to London to New Orleans, Paradoxia is an uncensored, novelised account of one woman's assault on the male of the species.

In Coney Island, Brooklyn, lonely widow Sarah Goldfarb wants nothing more than to lose weight and appear on a television game show. In her obsessive quest, she becomes addicted to diet pills, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and best friend, Tyrone, attempt to secure an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by selling heroin.Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in a spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares."Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists . . . To understand Selby's work is to understand the anguish of America." —The New York Times Book Review

Harry White is the man other men want to be: admired by his peers, talented, rich, and desired by countless women. His steady rise to a position of unprecedented influence in a New York investment firm seems inevitable to those who know him, and on the way he acquires a beautiful wife and children.

In his cell, a small-time petty criminal surrenders himself to the sadistic fantasies of hatred, rage and despair that are trapped inside him. This descent into the isolated mind of a man becomes a challenging vision of a world deprived of love.

The decadence and violence of the urban streets is graphically portrayed in this novel set in a post-WWII Brooklyn slum.