Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr.

Category: General Fiction, Novel
Language: English
Keywords: 1950's Multiple POVs New York City Transgressive Urban

Written by Hubert Selby Jr.
Read by William DeMeritt
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

The first novel to articulate the rage and pain of life in “the other America,” Hubert Selby Jr.’s Last Exit to Brooklyn is a classic of postwar American writing. Selby’s searing portrait of the powerless, the homeless, the dispossessed, is as fiercely and frighteningly apposite today as it was when it was first published more than fifty years ago. This explosive, transgressive best-seller created shock waves upon its release in 1964 with its raw, vibrant language and startling revelations of New York City’s underbelly.

Few novels have caused as much debate as Selby’s notorious masterpiece, which was even subject to an obscenity trial in the United Kingdom and banned in Italy due to its raw exploration of many societal taboos. The prostitutes, drunks, addicts, hoodlums, thieves, and johns of Selby’s Brooklyn are fierce and lonely creatures, desperately searching for a moment of transcendence amidst the decay and brutality of the waterfront—though none have any real hope of escape. Last Exit to Brooklyn offers a disturbing yet hauntingly sensitive portrayal of American life, confronting the worst excesses of human nature, and nearly fifty years after publication, stands as a crucial and masterful work of modern fiction.

This audiobook is masterfully read by William DeMeritt, and was produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont.

7 hrs and 39 mins
November 19, 2025