John King is an English writer best known for his novels which, for the most part, deal in the more rebellious elements driving the country's culture. His stories carry strong social and political undercurrents, and his work has been widely translated abroad. He has written articles and reviews for alternative and mainstream publications, edits the fiction journal Verbal, and is the co-owner of the London Books publishing house. Career Novels King's 1996 debut novel, The Football Factory, was an instant word-of-mouth success, selling around 300,000 copies in the UK. The book was subsequently turned into a play by Brighton Theatre Events, with German and Dutch adaptations following. A film adaptation appeared in 2004. Directed by Nick Love and starring Danny Dyer, Dudley Sutton, and Frank Harper, its UK DVD sales passed the two-million mark. Prior to the novel's release, an early version of the chapter "Millwall Away" appeared in Rebel Inc. This magazine also published early writing by Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner, and all three would subsequently join the Jonathan Cape publishing house. King was producing the fanzine Two Sevens, and Rebel Inc editor Kevin Williamson's fiction was featured, along with interviews with Welsh and the novelist Stewart Home. Following its publication, extracts from The Football Factory featured in issue 59 of the New York literary journal Grand Street. Two more novels —Headhunters and England Away—develop the themes of alienation and belonging found in The Football Factory, and the three books form a loose trilogy. Street newspaper The Big Issue described Headhunters as: "Sexy, dirty, violent, sad and funny; in fact, it has just about everything you could want from a book on contemporary working-class life in London". King's fourth novel, Human Punk (2000), draws on the emergence and evolution of punk rock as it tells the story of four boyhood friends; it is set in and around the town of Slough. White Trash (2002), which the author has described as "a defence of the NHS", drew the following praise from Alan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning: "Complete and unique, all stitched up and marvellous, the two sides of the equation brought together, realistic yet philosophical". In The Independent, Mat Coward wrote: "The cumulative effect of King's style, with streams of monologue, alternating between Ruby and Jeffreys, is astonishingly powerful in its detail and depth... This is an immensely timely and necessary book: stylish, witty and