Education of a Felon

“A masterful summation of the hard and brutal life of crime and prison from . . . America’s foremost chronicler of prison life.” —Los Angeles Times

In Education of a Felon, the reigning champion of prison novelists finally tells his own story. The son of an alcoholic stagehand father and a Busby Berkeley chorus girl, Bunker was—at seventeen—the youngest inmate ever in San Quentin. His hard-won experiences on L.A.’s meanest streets and in and out of prison gave him the material to write some of the grittiest and most affecting novels of our time.

From smoking a joint in the gas chamber to leaving fingerprints on a knife connected to a serial killer, from Hollywood’s steamy underside to swimming in the Neptune pool at San Simeon, Bunker delivers a memoir as colorful as any of his novels and as compelling as the life he’s lead.

“Bunker writes in straight-ahead, unadorned prose and, refreshingly, he refrains from excessive psychologizing and sentimentalizing . . . a rough-hewn memoir by a rough-hewn man.” —The New York Times Book Review

“In this picaresque, harrowing, humorous yet deeply sad excursion through his dark-starred youth, Bunker—arguably the most renowned convict writer in America—serves as both participant in and witness to the mid-century carnival of L.A. crime immortalized by James Ellroy . . . a thought-provoking and richly re-created tale of a career criminal.” —Publishers Weekly