My reading experiences with the poet and novelist Charles Bukowski (1920-94), once described by Time magazine as the ‘laureate of American lowlife’, have taught me an important truth about literature: that characters you hate can be at least as compelling as those you admire.   

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Take Henry Chinaski, the depressive, alcoholic protagonist of Bukowski’s five semi-autobiographical novels (he wrote six in total, as well as hundreds of poems and short stories). One of these in particular I have read so many times that the jacket is falling off: Women (1978), in which Bukowski’s alter-ego Chinaski enjoys – if that’s the right word – the rewards of literary fame after decades of obscurity. It followed his bestselling debut Post Office (1971), an account of his years as a mail carrier and unknown writer, and Factotum (1971), a prequel narrating Chinaski’s aimless existence after being rejected from the World War Two draft.   

Bukowski didn’t become famous until the late 1960s, when he was in his late forties. Born in Andernach, Germany, to a German mother and German-American father, he moved with his........

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