Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and
many would claim its most influential and imitated poet. At the forefront of American
counter-culture his Beat Generation writing is widely celebrated. He was born in Germany in
1920 to an American soldier father and a German mother and was brought to the United States at
the age of three. He grew up in Los Angeles and lived there for the majority of his life.
During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books including novels such as Factotum
and Post Office. He died in 1994 shortly after completing his last novel Pulp.
