Gerald Kersh

Gerald Kersh (1911-1968) was a British-American writer, born in Teddington, England, who became a U.S. citizen in 1959. Before writing full-time he worked as a cinema manager, bodyguard, debt collector, cook, and wrestler, and served in the Coldstream Guards during the Second World War. His breakthrough novel, Night and the City (1938), a portrait of London's criminal underworld, was adapted for film twice; Fowlers End (1958), a post-war comic novel, was called one of the funniest and most unjustly neglected books of its era by Anthony Burgess. His short story 'The Secret of the Bottle' won a 1958 Edgar Award, and his Karmesin stories follow a self-proclaimed master criminal narrating his own exploits. Harlan Ellison named Kersh his favorite author, citing the mix of mordant wit and pulp craftsmanship across his roughly twenty novels and many story collections.