[PDF] One Fat Englishman eBook

Author : Kingsley Amis
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 28,73 MB
Release : 2013-09-17
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1590176898

GET BOOK

The hero of One Fat Englishman, a literary publisher and lapsed Catholic escaped from the pages of Graham Greene to the campus of Budweiser College in provincial Pennsylvania, is philandering, drunken, bigoted, and very very fat, not to mention in a state of continuous spluttering rage against everything, not least his own overgrown self. In America, Roger Micheldene must deal with not so obliging suburban housewives, aspiring Jewish novelists who as good as clean his clock, stray deer, bad cigars, children who beat him at Scrabble (“It was no wonder that people were horrible when they started life as children”), and America itself, while making ever-more desperate and humiliating overtures to Helen, a Scandinavian ice queen. If only Roger would dare to show some real feeling of his own. This comic masterpiece—about the 1950s crashing drunkenly into the consumerist 1960s and a final scion of a disintegrating Old World empire encountering its upstart New World offspring—is one of Kingsley Amis’s greatest and most caustic performances.

Author : Kingsley Amis
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 48,50 MB
Release : 2012-10-02
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1590175921

GET BOOK

Booker Prize Winner A pub gathering of elderly married couples devolves into booze-inflected reminiscing—and complaining—in this “sharp and funny” English comedy about marriage, aging, and friendship (The Washington Post). Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon. Long-dormant rivalries and romances are rudely awakened, as life at the Bible and Crown, the local pub, is changed irrevocably. Considered by Martin Amis to be Kingsley Amis’s greatest achievement—a book that “stands comparison with any English novel of the [twentieth] century”—The Old Devils confronts the attrition of ageing with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.

Author : Kingsley Amis
Publisher : Viking
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 32,78 MB
Release : 2012
Category : College teachers
ISBN : 9780241956847

GET BOOK

'Lucky Jim' is the tale of university lecturer Jim Dixon who has to navigate the stumbling blocks of life at a red brick university, as he attempts to climb the social ladder to a moderately successful future.

Author : Kingsley Amis
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 33,8 MB
Release : 2013-05-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1590176170

GET BOOK

BOOKER PRIZE–WINNING AUTHOR Set in a world in which the Reformation failed, this award-winning science fiction tale is “one of the best . . . alternate-worlds novels in existence” (Philip K. Dick) In Kingsley Amis’s virtuoso foray into virtual history it is 1976, but the modern world is a medieval relic, frozen in intellectual and spiritual time ever since Martin Luther was promoted to pope back in the sixteenth century. Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice. In the audience is a select group of experts whose job is to determine whether that faultless voice should be preserved by performing a certain operation. Art, after all, is worth any sacrifice. How Hubert realizes what lies in store for him and how he deals with the whirlpool of piety, menace, terror, and passion that he soon finds himself in are the subject of a classic piece of counterfactual fiction equal to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. The Alteration won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel in 1976.

Author : Kingsley Amis
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 21,64 MB
Release : 2013-05-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1590176162

GET BOOK

The owner of a haunted country inn contends with death, fatherhood, romantic woes, and alcoholism in this humorous and “rattling good ghost story” from a Booker Prize–winning author (The New York Times) Maurice Allington has reached middle age and is haunted by death. As he says, “I honestly can’t see why everybody who isn’t a child, everybody who’s theoretically old enough to have understood what death means, doesn’t spend all his time thinking about it. It’s a pretty arresting thought.” He also happens to own and run a country inn that is haunted. The Green Man opens as Maurice’s father drops dead (had he seen something in the room?) and continues as friends and family convene for the funeral. Maurice’s problems are many and increasing: How to deal with his own declining health? How to reach out to a teenage daughter who watches TV all the time? How to get his best friend’s wife in the sack? How to find another drink? (And another.) And then there is always death. The Green Man is a ghost story that hits a live nerve, a very black comedy with an uncannily happy ending: in other words, Kingsley Amis at his best.

Author : Kingsley Amis
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 24,24 MB
Release : 2013-09-17
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1590176901

GET BOOK

Kingsley Amis, along with being the funniest English writer of his generation was a great chronicler of the fads and absurdities of his age, and Girl, 20 is a delightfully incisive dissection of the flower-power phase of the 1960s. Amis’s antihero, Sir Roy Vandervane, a conductor and composer who bears more than a passing resemblance to Leonard Bernstein, is a pillar of the establishment whohas fallen hard for protest, bellbottoms, and the electric guitar. And since vain Sir Vandervane is a great success, he is also free to pursue his greatest failing: a taste for younger and younger women. Highborn hippie Sylvia (not, in fact, twenty) is his latest infatuation and a threat to his whole family, from his drama-queen wife, Kitty, to Penny, his long-suffering daughter. All this is recounted by Douglas Yandell, a music critic with his own love problems, who finds that he too has a part in this story of botched artistry, bumbling celebrity, and scheming family, in a time that for all its high-minded talk is as low and dishonest as any other.

Author : R. Delderfield
Publisher : Sourcebooks, Inc.
Page : 658 pages
File Size : 12,80 MB
Release : 2009-06-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1402227221

GET BOOK

From master author R. F. Delderfield, the first in the beloved classic God Is an Englishman series.The first novel in the epic God Is an Englishman series, this book is a stirring saga of England in the 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution takes hold, forever changing the landscape of England and her people. Adam Swann, scion of an army family, returns home in 1858 after service with Her Majesty's army in the Crimea and India, determined to build his fortune in the dog-eat-dog world of Victorian commerce. Swann is soon captivated by Henrietta, the high-spirited daughter of a local mill owner. As Swann works to build his name, he and Henrietta share adventures, reversal, and fortune. A beloved novel by a beloved author, God Is an Englishman is a treasure both for Delderfield fans and the growing legion of fans of historical fiction. "R. F. Delderfield is a born storyteller." Sunday Mirror "A book to get lost in... An epic historical novel artfully contructed." New York Times Book Review "A novel in the grand tradition of Thackery and Dickens." Milwaukee Journal "A delightful bounty of characters fairly jumps from the pages of God Is an Englishman." Columbus Dispatch

Author : Justin Webb
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 131 pages
File Size : 45,98 MB
Release : 2013-03-05
Category : Humor
ISBN : 1476730202

GET BOOK

An editor at BBC-TV takes a witty and honest look at the “special” relationship between the US and the UK. IMAGINE INVITING A BRIT TO A BARBECUE - THAT’S THIS BOOK. Justin Webb was the BBC’s man in America. He covered politics and interviewed presidents, but more importantly he reported, as Alistair Cooke once did, on the rich tapestry of American life. This is his toast to a country he called home for the best part of a decade. Webb’s America is a place of possibility and promise. He is scornful of those who think the nation is in decline, and posits an exciting new diplomatic era in which America diversifies its international relationships. Cheers, America will make you smile. Its wry and heartfelt observations provide a redeeming vision of our country at a time when it is redefining its identity.