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Kersh, Gerald

Page history last edited by PBworks 13 years, 5 months ago

Gerald Kersh (1911-1968), English novelist and short story writer, was born into a Jewish family living in Teddington. At the age of 2, he was pronounced dead of lung congestion, but recovered. At 8 he wrote his first story. He attended the Regent Street Polytechnic, but left before completing school.

Kersh worked as a cinema manager, bodyguard, debt collector, fish & chip cook, travelling salesman, French teacher and all-in-wrestler before the publication of his first novel, Jews Without Jehovah, about a Jewish family in London. The book was withdrawn after relatives filed libel suits. More successful was his book about lowlife ponce Harry Fabian: Night and the City (1938). Harry Fabian is a small-time Soho gangster who eventually turns white slave trader.

In WWII Kersh joined the Coldstream Guards, but was invalided out with an injury in 1941. He returned to the front in 1945 as a journalist and succeeded in tracing some members of his family. Later he wrote about Belsen, and made his first visit to the USA, where he was abled to sell some articles. He eventually emigrated there after a brief period of residence in Barbados. Meanwhile, he wrote comedies for the BBC and scripts for the Army Film Unit. Under the name Piers England he wrote leaders for The People from 1940 until 1946, and then turned his hand to novels. He married Alice Thompson Rostrom in 1938, Clare Alyne Pacaud in 1943 and Florence Sochis in 1955.

Prelude to a Certain Midnight (1947), is about the hunt for a child-murderer in Soho. The Song Of The Flea (1948) is about a writer, The Thousand Deaths Of Mr Small (1950) about a nervous breakdown. His wrote an SF novel, The Great Wash (1953) aka Secret Masters. After settling in New York State he wrote Fowlers End (1957) about the cinema proprietor Sam Yudenow. He also received an Edgar for his short story "The Mystery Of The Bottle" about the disappearance of writer Ambrose Bierce.