Paperback Colour Interior VersionMost autobiographies won't be of any apparent interest unless the author is famous, so, why read this one given Simon Mark Smith is not a public figure? The brief answer is this book will take you on journeys that will resonate with your deepest feelings about love, hate, and knowledge. Written in a format that jumps between time zones and subject matter, you will be challenged from the moment the book begins right up till its final lines.

Volume One was written over a period of 18 years and follows the author's life from birth until the age of 17. Born with severe disabilities and living in care homes until the age of 7, he then moved into a council flat with his mother and her psychotic boyfriend on a rough South London council estate where violence was all the rage.

If you're thinking, "This sounds a bit depressing," then be prepared to be surprised. This isn't a typical story about a boy who makes good, but a philosophical and psychological journey of discovery that will have you laughing and crying out loud while also taking you on unexpected tangents through imaginative prose, poetry and mini-plays, as well as the worlds of karate, disability politics, psychoanalysis and love.

With a primary focus on love, along roads full of heartbreak, the stories eventually find their way to a point of revelation, a revelation which for many readers may be life-changing too. Covering the period from the 1800s through to the 1980s, the book is filled with many other characters whose stories will touch you to the core as we travel with them across Latvia, South Africa, the USSR, England, France, Israel, and Canada and both World Wars.

And through their experiences, you will find places within yourself you didn't know existed. Brace yourself for the ride of a life.

. .