Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass - Hardcover

by Darren McGarvey (Author)

"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.

Author Biography

Darren McGarvey, who is also known by the stage name Loki, grew up in Pollok on the south side of Glasgow. He is a writer, columnist, and rap recording artist who has made regular media appearances as a social commentator, including on the BBC and STV. In 2015, he became the first ever rapper-in residence at Police Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit, and he continues to work across Scotland in some of its most challenged communities. Poverty Safari, his first book, was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller. He lives in Glasgow.