Back to results
Cover image for book A Life Discarded

A Life Discarded

148 Diaries Found in the Trash
By:Alexander Masters
Publisher:Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Print ISBN:9780374178185
eText ISBN:9780374714536
Edition:1
Copyright:2016
Format:Reflowable

eBook Features

Instant Access

Purchase and read your book immediately

Read Offline

Access your eTextbook anytime and anywhere

Study Tools

Built-in study tools like highlights and more

Read Aloud

Listen and follow along as Bookshelf reads to you

Alexander Masters, the bestselling author of Stuart: A Life Backwards, asks you to join him in celebrating an unknown and important life left on the scrap heap

In 2001, 148 tattered and mold-covered notebooks were discovered lying among broken bricks in a skip on a building site in Cambridge. Tens of thousands of pages were filled to the edges with urgent handwriting. They were a small part of an intimate, anonymous diary, starting in 1952 and ending half a century later, a few weeks before the books were thrown out. Over five years, the award-winning biographer Alexander Masters uncovers the identity and real history of their author, with an astounding final revelation.

A Life Discarded
is a true, shocking, poignant, often hilarious story of an ordinary life. The author of the diaries, known only as 'I,' is the tragicomic patron saint of everyone who feels their life should have been more successful. Part thriller, part love story, part social history, A Life Discarded is a biographical detective story that unfolds with the suspense of a mystery but has all the warmth, respect, humor, and dazzling originality that made Masters's Stuart: A Life Backwards such a beloved book.

• 2026 © SAU Tech Bookstore. All Rights Reserved.