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We publish books that matter — narrative and literary nonfiction on important topics, and the best of local, international, and translated fiction.

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Up the Down Staircase

Bel Kaufman

‘Shot through with despair and hopefulness, violence and levity, bureaucratic inanity and a blizzard of official memorandums so mind-bendingly illogical as to seem almost Kafkaesque … A stunningly accurate portrait of life in an urban school.’

Margalit Fox, The New York Times

‘The most excellent and useful portrait of a[n] … American teacher’s life that we are likely to have for a long time.’

Life

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‘[Kaufman] fully grasped the thankless position of the teachers left to impart knowledge and instil citizenship in the face of awesome obstacles … [T]he most enduring account we have of teachers’ lives — not naïve, not exculpatory, but empathetic and aware.’

Samuel G. Freedman, The New Yorker

Our reissue of Bel Kaufman’s classic 1964 novel timelessly depicts the shambolic joys and myriad frustrations of a young teacher. With an introduction by Diane Ravitch and a foreword by Gabbie Stroud.

Sylvia Barrett arrives at New York City’s Calvin Coolidge High fresh from earning literature degrees at Hunter College and eager to shape young minds. Instead she encounters broken windows, a lack of supplies, a stifling bureaucracy, and students with no interest in Chaucer. Her bumpy yet ultimately rewarding journey is depicted through an extraordinary collection of correspondence: sternly worded yet nonsensical administrative memos, furtive notes of wisdom from teacher to teacher, ‘polio consent slips’, and student homework assignments that unwittingly speak from the heart.

Up the Down Staircase stands as the seminal novel of a beleaguered public school system that is redeemed by teachers who love to teach and students who long to be recognised. It is poignant, devastating, laugh-out-loud funny, and — in our current moment of debate around the future of education — more relevant than ever.

‘Shot through with despair and hopefulness, violence and levity, bureaucratic inanity and a blizzard of official memorandums so mind-bendingly illogical as to seem almost Kafkaesque … A stunningly accurate portrait of life in an urban school.’

Margalit Fox, The New York Times

‘The most excellent and useful portrait of a[n] … American teacher’s life that we are likely to have for a long time.’

Life

View all reviews

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 198mm × 129mm

Extent:384pp

ISBN (13):9781925849578

RRP:$27.99

Pub date:7 Jan 2020

Rights Held: UK & Commonwealth

High-res cover:Download Image

AWARDS

CATEGORIES / tags

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) FICTION / Satire FICTION / Humorous / General FICTION / Epistolary FICTION / Literary

AUTHOR

Bel Kaufman

Bel Kaufman was an author and schoolteacher. Born in Berlin in 1911, she spent her childhood in Odessa and emigrated with her family to the Bronx when she was twelve. Her grandfather was the Yiddish humourist Sholem Aleichem. In addition to Up the Down Staircase, she is also the author of the novel Love, Etc. She died in 2014.

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Bel Kaufman was an author and schoolteacher. Born in Berlin in 1911,…

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