Down and Out Today

Notes from the Gutter

by Matthew Small

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.

Buy on Amazon Buy on Waterstones

*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.

Pub Date 1 Oct 2015 | Archive Date 10 Feb 2016

Paperbooks | Legend Times Group

Nonfiction (Adult) | Travel

Description

What does poverty mean today? Writer Matthew Small seeks to answer this question and witness the similarities and differences between poverty in the UK and India.

Poverty stretches across all of humanity and by travelling East, Small encounters the raw faces of poverty in India’s slums; he works in a leprosy community, joins the Sisters of Mercy on the littered yet exhilarating streets of Kolkata. He then returns to the UK, to Bath, to see what the passing of three months means to those who are scarred by one of the most unglamorous of all humanities’ ills, being poor.

Small engages with different community members who are living with poverty, to answer these long standing questions: What’s keeping them down? What’s pushing them out? And how can we move forward?

What does poverty mean today? Writer Matthew Small seeks to answer this question and witness the similarities and differences between poverty in the UK and India.

Poverty stretches across all of...

Advance Praise

‘Through his personal journey of discovery, Matthew Small gently reveals how poverty is relative to the society in which you live in. A compassionate book that provides no easy answers but gives humanity to those we so often turn our backs on.’Joanna Mack
‘Matthew Small has produced a text which is both enlightening and startling. Illuminating those corners of society which mainstream literature so often leaves in the shadows, the world needs more writers like Matthew Small: writers willing to get their hands dirty; writers willing to listen, observe and document with compassion and candour.’ Charlie Carroll
‘Down and Out Today illustrates very well the sheer brutality of how societies, particularly rich ones like the UK, often treat those with the least. The book is deeply troubling on many levels but at the same time it is inspiring and uplifting as difficult life stories are related with huge compassion.’ Tracy Shildrick
Praise for Matthew’s writing:
‘The biology of Israel/Palestine simply and beautifully revealed...’ Jon Snow, Journalist and Presenter

‘Through his personal journey of discovery, Matthew Small gently reveals how poverty is relative to the society in which you live in. A compassionate book that provides no easy answers but gives...