Often referred to as the ‘godfather of lowlife literature’, Henry Charles Bukowski was certainly familiar with the grittier side of life. The writer was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski on August 16, 1920 in Andernach, Germany to a US army sergeant serving in Germany just after the First World War, and a German girl with whom he had been having an affair. When Bukowski was 24, his short story "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip" was published in Story magazine. In the early 1950s, Bukowski took a job as a fill-in letter carrier with the United States Post Office Department in Los Angeles but resigned just before he reached three years' service. Charles Bukowski fought, drank, and tirelessly wrote his way to international renown by defining new American outsider poetry. A self-mythologizing and ingenious promoter, Bukowski was also an extremely prolific novelist, columnist, short-story writer, and poet best known for his hard-bitten, minimalist portrayals of Los Angeles's underbelly. His influence is everywhere: in an era where it can be difficult to give away poetry books, the many volumes of poetry that Bukowski produced during - and after - his lifetime take up more shelf space than any other contemporary poet. From his early hardscrabble life to his literary success, Charles Bukowski's unique personality came alive through his work. In 1993, the year before he died, this counterculture icon recorded and published selections from his classics. You can listen online to free English audiobook “Uncensored” by Charles Bukowski on our website.
