A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in the Trash

Alexander Masters, the bestselling author of Stuart: A Life Backwards, asks you to join him in celebrating an unknown and important life left on the scrap heap

In 2001, 148 tattered and mold-covered notebooks were discovered lying among broken bricks in a skip on a building site in Cambridge. Tens of thousands of pages were filled to the edges with urgent handwriting. They were a small part of an intimate, anonymous diary, starting in 1952 and ending half a century later, a few weeks before the books were thrown out. Over five years, the award-winning biographer Alexander Masters uncovers the identity and real history of their author, with an astounding final revelation.

A Life Discarded is a true, shocking, poignant, often hilarious story of an ordinary life. The author of the diaries, known only as 'I,' is the tragicomic patron saint of everyone who feels their life should have been more successful. Part thriller, part love story, part social history, A Life Discarded is a biographical detective story that unfolds with the suspense of a mystery but has all the warmth, respect, humor, and dazzling originality that made Masters's Stuart: A Life Backwards such a beloved book.

© 2025 Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Ebook): 9780374714536

Release date

Ebook: 16 October 2025