A Handful of Dust

by Evelyn Waugh

Overview

Selected by Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the century, this "absolutely delightful" novel (New York Times) movingly and comically chronicles the breakdown of a marriage and the disintegration of English society in the years after World War I.




After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last has grown bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. In a novel that combines tragedy, comedy, and savage irony, Evelyn Waugh indelibly captures the irresponsible mood of the "crazy and sterile generation" between the wars.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316216265
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	12/11/2012
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	152,473
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), whom Time called "one of the century's great masters of English prose," wrote several widely acclaimed novels as well as volumes of biography, memoir, travel writing, and journalism. Three of his novels, A Handful of Dust, Scoop, and Brideshead Revisited, were selected by the Modern Library as among the 100 best novels of the twentieth century.

Date of Birth:

October 28, 1903

Date of Death:

April 10, 1966

Place of Birth:

West Hampstead, London

Education:

Hertford College, Oxford University, 1921-1924; Heatherley's Art School, 1924

Read an Excerpt

Evelyn Waugh's 1935 novel is a mordantly funny vision of aristocratic decadence and ennui in England between the wars.

It tells the story of Tony Last, an aristocrat who, to the irritation of his wife, in inordinately obsessed with his Victorian gothic country house and life. Bored with her husband's old-fashioned ways, Lady Brenda begins an affair with an ambitious social climber. Faced with the collapse of his marriage and a sudden family tragedy, Tony is driven to seek solace in a foolhardy search for the fabled El Dorado in the wilds of Brazil, where he finds himself at the mercy of a jungle that is only slightly more savage than the one he left behind in England.

Here is a sublime example of the incomparably brilliant and wicked wit of one of the 20th century's most accomplished novelists.

Editorial Reviews

"A story both tragic and hilariously funny, that seems to move along without aid from its author...Unquestionably the best book Mr. Waugh has written."—Saturday Review

"The most mature and the best written novel that Mr. Waugh has yet produced."—New Statesman & Nation

"Absolutely delightful."—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

"Glacially sardonic....A masterpiece."—TIME

"A brilliant satirical study of the eccentric between-wars society to which Waugh belonged."—LIFE

"Waugh treats society as a wonderland in which he plays the part of a rude, libellous, yet domestic Alice."—V.S. Pritchett

From the Publisher