Charles Bukowski - onetime bum, long-term alcoholic, and author of now-classic novels such as Post Office, Factotum, and Women - rose from obscurity to become world famous. His semiautobiographical books about low-life America made him a cult figure and culminated in the making of Barfly, a Hollywood film based on Bukowski's life.

In this, the first major biography of Bukowski, Howard Sounes has drawn on years of exhaustive research - including new interviews with virtually all of Bukowski's friends, his family, and his many lovers, as well as unprecedented access to his private letters and unpublished writing - to reveal the extraordinary true story of the Dirty Old Man of American literature.

Illustrated with over sixty never-before-published photographs, Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life also includes original drawings by Bukowski and unique contributions by friends, including Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, R. Crumb, and Harry Dean Stanton.