Short Synopsis
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.

Full Synopsis
In 2001, 148 tattered and mold-covered notebooks were discovered lying among broken bricks in a bin on a building site in Cambridge, England. Tens of thousands of pages were filled to the edges with urgent handwriting. They were a small part of an intimate, mysterious diary, starting in 1952 and ending half a century later, a few weeks before the books were thrown out. The anonymous author, known only as "I," reveals themselves as the tragicomic patron saint of everyone who feels their life should have been more successful. Over five years, the brilliant biographer Alexander Masters uncovers the identity and real history of this secret author, ending with an astounding final revelation.

A biographical detective story that unfolds with the suspense of a mystery—but has all the dazzling originality that made Masters's Stuart: A Life Backwards such a beloved book—A Life Discarded is a true, poignant, often hilarious story of an ordinary life.

"Masters is a beautiful writer: funny, inquisitive and attentive; the talents on display in his barnstorming 2005 book Stuart: A Life Backwards can be seen here, too." ---The Guardian

"A bizarre, engrossing, affectionate book that is a triumph on every level." ---The Times

"Profoundly moving." ---Daily Mail

"Written like a taut thriller, A Life Discarded is rife with revelations and wrong turns before reaching its startling denouement." ---The Wall Street Journal

“Now that he has provided three examples, we can confidently state that a book by Alexander Masters is always two books: one a fascinating biography of an ordinary yet extraordinary though damaged person, the other Masters' meta-chronicle of how he came to understand the subject and write the book.” ---The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Here we have something rather cosmic: Into the hands of witty Alexander Masters, ardent celebrant of the hidden and the rejected, falls this diary dump, this exiled word-hoard, this abandoned trove of interiority." ---New York Times