Drunken Angel by Alan Kaufman; Unabridged MP3 Audio Book; Narrator Keith Szarabajka

Alan Kaufman recounts with unvarnished honesty the story of the alcoholism that took him to the brink of death, the post-traumatic stress disorder that drove him to the edge of madness, and the love that brought him back. Son of a French Holocaust survivor, Kaufman was a drinker so mauled by his indulgences that it is a marvel he hung on long enough to get into recovery. With his estranged daughter as inspiration, Kaufman cleaned himself up at age forty, taking full responsibility for nearly destroying himself, his work, and so many loved ones along the way. Kaufman minces no words as he looks back on a life pickled in self-pity, self-loathing, and guilt. Reading Drunken Angel is like watching an accident to see if any of the victims crawl away barely alive. Kaufman did, and here he delivers a lacerating, cautionary tale of a life wasted and reclaimed.

“With an outsized heart to go with its outsized thirst, Drunken Angel tells the sort of truths that feel like myths and the sort of myths that feel like truth.”—Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket

“Drunken Angel reads like a recovery memoir written in another time, from another generation, though it’s of the present. Alan Kaufman’s story is riveting: raw in its passion and lacerating in its testimony.”—Oscar Villalon, former book editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, board member of the National Book Critics Circle

“An avant-garde writer recalls his journey from gutter drunk to PEN American member…[An] addictive memoir of self-destruction, recuperation, and a literary coming-of-age.”—Kirkus Reviews

“As engrossing, moving, and honest a literary memoir as one will ever read…Alan Kaufman takes his readers on a Jewish Huck Finn journey of addiction, regret, and rage. With his immense literary gifts as a storyteller, he turns the jagged, jaded tale of his life into a true work of art.”—Thane Rosenbaum, author of The Golems of Gotham

“A great, amazing, and honest book. An interesting life, a shameless sincerity, and the talent to tell a story are the essential ingredients needed to create a captivating memoir and Alan Kaufman’s Drunken Angel has tons of all three.”—Etgar Keret, author of The Girl on the Fridge

Alan Kaufman is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Jew Boy, the novel Matches, and a book of poetry, Who Are We? He is the editor of The New Generation: Fiction for Our Time from America’s Writing Programs, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, and coeditor of The Outlaw Bible of American Literature. His writings have appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, Tikkun, Tel Aviv Review, Witness, and other publications, as well as in many webzines, including Tattoo Jew, of which he is the editor. A former editor of Jewish Frontier, he is the founder and editor of the controversial magazine Davka: Jewish Cultural Revolution and has performed extensively as a spoken-word poet in the United States and internationally. He holds American, French, and Israeli citizenship and lives in San Francisco, where he teaches classes about memoir writing and journalism at the Academy of Art University and other workshops. Well-established in his literary career, he is now gaining recognition as a painter of haunting portraits.