The Hate Game

Winner - 2025 Independent Author Awards (Memoir & Historical Nonfiction)Silver Medal - 2025 Readers’ Favorite Literary Competition (Nonfiction)Runner-Up - 2025 London Book Festival (Memoir)Winner - 2024 Literary Titan Book AwardThey shoved his head into the toilet-a baptism of dirty water and urine. They drew a Star of David on his forehead. And that was just another day at school.Set against the brutal corridors of 1970s England, The Hate Game: Screaming in the Silence is a raw, darkly funny memoir of trauma, resilience, and reluctant transformation.Gary Trew didn’t grow up in a warzone, but Knoll Boys School came close. Violence was routine, bullying was institutional, and anti-Semitic torment seeped into the curriculum unchecked. Teachers turned away. Survival meant silence.Beyond the school gates, however, lay a different kind of chaos-contradictory, unpredictable, and loving in its own crooked way. A scripture-quoting mother with a flair for curses. A pipe-smoking father who rarely spoke but always cared. A house full of odd rituals, awkward warmth, and flashes of humour bright enough to pierce the dark.Told with searing honesty and wicked wit, The Hate Game is more than a memoir of abuse. It is a story of defiance, emotional survival, and what it meant to grow up working-class in a country that didn’t care.A compelling memoir in the tradition of Educated, Angela’s Ashes, and The Glass Castle.