Gerald Kersh (1912–1968) was an English writer of novels and short stories, partially famous during his lifetime but oddly forgotten and neglected after his death in poverty. In his youth, he held a variety of strange jobs, including working as a wrestler, which brought him into close contact with the London underworld. In his own words, the novels he had published up to that point “hadn’t really been fiction at all” and “contained an irreducible minimum of made-up stuff.”
During the Second World War, Kersh was severely injured during the Blitz — at one point he was buried alive three times — an experience that left him partially disabled. After the war, he moved to the United States, where he began writing articles as well as horror, science-fiction, detective stories, and novels, gaining recognition in both the USA and the UK.
Harlan Ellison later stated that Kersh was his favorite author. Writing to a fan, Ellison recommended Kersh by saying: “You will find yourself in the presence of a talent so immense and compelling that you will understand how grateful and humble I felt merely to have been permitted to associate myself with his name as editor.” Anthony Boucher likewise noted that Kersh was “incapable of writing a dull sentence.”
Today, Kersh is remembered (amongst others) for his novel Night and the City (loosely adapted into a film noir by Jules Dassin), which prompted me to write about it here — because I have rarely encountered a novel so relentlessly depressing and filthy, populated by characters so thoroughly rotten. Luckily, publisher London Books Classics reissued recently Night and the City with fine introduction by John King.
I expected some relatively easy noir reading, in the vein of David Goodis, but that was not the case here. Instead, the narrator throws us directly into the seedy world of London’s petty criminals and prostitutes, with Harry Fabian at its center — a figure so morally bankrupt that it is difficult to feel any sympathy for him.
Harry lives off his girlfriend Zoe, who prostitutes herself, and in one of the novel’s most unsettling episodes he stalks one of her customers, a lonely man whose wife is dying of cancer. After following him for some time, Harry finally confronts him in a Turkish bath and discovers documents in his coat revealing where he lives. He then visits the man’s home and blackmails him, demanding one hundred pounds in exchange for keeping his secret from his sick wife. The man can only produce fifty pounds, which Harry grudgingly accepts — enough, for the moment, to keep his schemes alive.
These schemes revolve around Harry’s attempt to establish a wrestling business, a venture driven more by desperation than by any real competence. Kersh’s sentences are long and dense, carefully describing each character while offering sharp, often merciless observations about human nature.
Alongside Harry, there is Vi, who works for the nightclub owner Nosseross, and her friend Helen. Vi persuades Helen — who initially appears innocent — to take a job at the nightclub. There is also Adam, perhaps the only genuinely decent character in the novel, who falls in love with Helen and reluctantly accepts work in the same corrupt environment.
Fabian, however, proves incapable of restraint. He quickly squanders the money he has obtained and is soon forced to look for more. One of the novel’s most tragic figures is the once-great wrestler Ali The Turk, an aging man who still believes he can fight one last battle despite his failing heart. Adam warns Fabian that the match may kill him, but Fabian ignores the warning. Ali wins the bout — and dies shortly afterward from a heart attack. I found this moment genuinely moving and deeply sad.
There is also Bert, Fabian’s brother, a hardworking fruit seller who repeatedly tries to pull Harry back from his downward spiral. In the end, Fabian is pursued by a deranged wrestler, recklessly gambles away what little money he has left, and is finally arrested after Zoe informs the police of his exploitation.
The only character who escapes this world with any dignity is Adam, who leaves the nightclub scene behind to pursue his true calling as a sculptor.
When compared to American noir writers such as James M. Cain, David Goodis, or Jim Thompson, Gerald Kersh feels markedly different. American noir, even at its darkest, often relies on speed, compression, and a certain brutal efficiency. The novels are short, the plots tight, and the prose stripped down to the bone. Kersh, on the other hand, allows his narrative to sprawl. He lingers over descriptions, moral observations, and the psychological decay of his characters.
Where Cain or Thompson often place us directly inside the mind of the criminal, Kersh keeps a certain distance, using an omniscient narrator who judges, observes, and exposes. This makes Night and the City less immediately gripping than many American noirs, but also more suffocating. There is no quick escape, no sharp punchline — only the slow accumulation of misery.
In Night and the City, the night is not merely a setting but a moral condition. Darkness does not simply cover London; it reveals it. The characters come alive only after sunset, when the city allows them to become what they truly are. When morning arrives, it brings no redemption — only anxiety, exhaustion, and the dread of returning to work and survival.
Fabian is not destroyed solely by society or circumstance but by his own nature. Kersh makes it clear that this is not a novel about an innocent man crushed by the system. Fabian is greedy, parasitic, and incapable of self-restraint. The city merely provides the stage on which his weaknesses are exposed. In this sense, Night and the City is less a crime novel than a study of self-destruction, one in which the night does not create monsters, but simply gives them room to move.
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