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The Decline and Fall is Evelyn Waugh's first novel, based in part on his schooldays at Lancing College and his experience as a teacher in Wales. It is a social satire that employs the author's characteristic black humor in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s. The novel's title makes an ironic comparison between the fall of the Roman empire and the protagonist's own antics.
Waugh holds a strong claim to be the single most important influence over the modern British novel. His name is often summoned up by publishers and reviewers, casually acknowledging its importance as a point of reference, in discussing contemporary fiction. It might indicate a comedy of manners, possibly dealing with the class system and social awkwardness, or polite restraint edging towards an upsurge of death or manic violence. It may also mean a lush, sensuous evocation of lost youth, bathing the past in a soft refulgent glow and sniping unhappily at the present. It may just as validly invoke bleakly comic insights chronicling lives of worthless hedonism. But most importantly, a comparison with Waugh is rarely pejorative. At worst his name is a signal of snobbery and a supercilious manner displayed in the writing but most often, when applied to an author's technical facility, high praise can only be a short distance away.
CONDITION: Hard Cover, Chapman and Hall, 1949 printing, DJ tattered - we will provide a fresh mylar cover to protect your investment. 239 pages, originally published 1928 |
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