The Glass Cage

A blistering account of fame, class and the cost of reinvention, as John Healy confronts what happens after survival − and the invisible cage success can build

Nearly four decades after his acclaimed memoir The Grass Arena, John Healy delivers the long-awaited second volume of his extraordinary life.

The Glass Cage begins in the wake of sudden literary success and fragile sobriety, as Healy attempts to inhabit a world far removed from the prisons, streets and wino jungle that shaped him. Thrust into publishing, publicity and middle-class expectation, he finds himself disoriented by power, privilege and the subtle humiliations of class.

Written with fierce candour and dark, unsparing wit, this is a memoir not of escape, but of exposure − and of the cost of crossing worlds.