#1 - The Football Factory
The Football Factory centres on Tom Johnson, a reasoned 'Chelsea hooligan' who represents a disaffected society operating by brutal rules. We are shown the realities of life - social degradation, unemployment, racism, casual violence, excessive drink and bad sex - and, perhaps more importantly, how they fall into a political context of surveillance, media manipulation and division.
Graphic and disturbing, sometimes very funny, and deeply affecting throughout, The Football Factory is a vertiginous rush of adrenaline - the most authentic book yet on the so-called English Disease.
Graphic and disturbing, sometimes very funny, and deeply affecting throughout, The Football Factory is a vertiginous rush of adrenaline - the most authentic book yet on the so-called English Disease.
#2 - Headhunters
Following on from his bestselling study of violence, The Football Factory, John King considers Britain's other obsession - sex. Formed in the chemical mists of New Year's Eve, The Sex Division sees the once sacred act of procreation at its most material, as five men devise a system based on the sexual act. In this lager-soaked league, the most that women can offer a man is 4 points - unless, that is, she leaves her handbag unattended...
From its base in the asset-stripped, emotionally castrated 90s, Headhunters shows the dreams of The Sex Division members breaking through the heavy media cloud of anorexic pin-ups and paedophile fashion. A missing brother, prophetic visions, a love affair, and tit-for-tat confrontation draw the characters out into the open - revealing the men behind the machismo, their need for mutual respect, and their recognition of the hidden or suppressed affinities.
From its base in the asset-stripped, emotionally castrated 90s, Headhunters shows the dreams of The Sex Division members breaking through the heavy media cloud of anorexic pin-ups and paedophile fashion. A missing brother, prophetic visions, a love affair, and tit-for-tat confrontation draw the characters out into the open - revealing the men behind the machismo, their need for mutual respect, and their recognition of the hidden or suppressed affinities.
#3 - England Away
Having examined England's twin obsessions - violence and sex - in THE FOOTBALL FACTORY and HEADHUNTERS, John King completes his trilogy with ENGLAND AWAY: sex and violence abroad, under the Union Jack. The novel works on three levels - past, present and future - as pensioner Bill Farrell remembers his war experiences in a London pub, Tommy Johnson fights his way through Holland and Germany for an England football match in Berlin, and Harry considers the future fuelled by doses of Dutch skunk and German speed. John King's powerful new novel looks at notions of what it means to be English. Exploring stereotypes of language and nationalism, the primal pulls of lust and aggression, ENGLAND AWAY culminates in a unity of the tribes and a blitzkreig in the streets of Berlin.