SILLITOE, ALAN

born March 4, 1928, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Eng. writer whose brash and angry accounts of working-class life injected new vigour into post-World War II British fiction. The son of a tannery worker, Sillitoe worked in factories from the age of 14. In 1946 he joined the air force and for two years served as a radio operator in Malaya. After his return to England, X rays revealed that he had contracted tuberculosis, and he spent several months in a hospital. Thereafter he lived in Nottingham (1950) and Kent (1951) and for the next six years in France and then Spain. After meeting Robert Graves, who suggested that he write about Nottingham, Sillitoe began work on his first published novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958). An immediate success, it is the story of a rude and amoral young labourer for whom drink and sex on Saturday night provide the only relief from the oppression of the working life. Sillitoe worked on the screenplay of the film version (1960), which won international acclaim. From the short-story collection The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1959), Sillitoe helped adapt the title story into a film (1962). Later novels, such as The Death of William Posters (1965) and The Widower's Son (1977), deal with more intellectual working-class characters. The Storyteller (1979) depicts in an intricately fragmented style a man's deterioration into madness. Notable short-story collections are The Ragman's Daughter (1963; filmed 1974), Men, Women, and Children (1974), and The Second Chance (1980). Sillitoe has also written children's books, poetry, and plays while continuing as a novelist.