The product of one man's personal and professional frustration while suffering long-term illness, Last Exit to Brooklyn caused a commotion on publication in 1964 with its graphic descriptions of gang violence and sexual transgression. It was the subject of a successful private prosecution for obscenity in Britain, brought by Tory MP Sir Cyril Black in 1967, but John Mortimer and a coterie of sympathetic writers and scholars including Frank Kermode and Anthony Burgess had the ruling overturned a year later. Last Exit received the support and critical praise of literary luminaries  Allen Ginsberg declared that it would "still be eagerly read in 100 years"  and this new Penguin Classics edition includes a moving introduction by contemporary enfant terrible Irvine Welsh.

The novel is broken into six parts which act as self-contained vignettes, each prefaced with a biblical quotation. Taken as a whole, it is a compartmentalised study in urban cruelty; New York becomes almost dystopian in the way that it spits out hoodlums and undeserving victims from every street corner. In "The Queen is Dead", a "hip queer" - the transvestite Georgette  is scorned and attacked by both her would-be lover and her brutal brother, and seeks solace in marijuana and Benzedrine. In "Tralala", the prostitute, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh in the 1989 film, is barely 18, and pays for her risky business by succumbing to extreme sexual violence.

The novel's famously idiosyncratic prose - a crudely punctuated, phonetic vernacular - is cut through with a surprising intermittent lyricism, making it clear that Selby has some sympathy for his characters. This saves what could have been a bitterly depressing book from being truly sadistic.

This edition also features an afterword by the author, which helps to place the novel within a biographical context almost as unforgiving as the fiction itself. Read in conjunction with Welsh's highly personal introduction, this authorial note will be illuminating for longstanding fans, and make Last Exit to Brooklyn easier to swallow for newcomers.