Kingsley Amis

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 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.

A hilarious satire about college life and high class manners, this is a classic of postwar English literature.Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”

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.

The life of secret agent James Bond has begun to fall into a pattern that threatens complacency... until the sunny afternoon when M is kidnapped. The action ricochets across the globe to a volcanic Greek island, where Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People's Liberation Army of China collaborates with an ex-Nazi atrocity expert in a world-menacing conspiracy. Stripped of all professional aids, Bond faces, unarmed, the monstrous devices of Colonel Sun in a test that brings him to the verge of his physical endurance.

A ghost story for adults. Like all good coaching inns, the Green Man is said to boast a resident ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a notorious seventeenth-century practitioner of black arts and sexual deviancy, rumoured to have killed his wife. However, the landlord, Maurice Allington, is the sole witness to the renaissance of the malevolent Underhill. Led by an anxious desire to vindicate his sanity, Allington strives to uncover the key to Underhill's satanic powers. All the while, the skeletons in the cupboard of Allington's own domestic affairs rattle to get out too.

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.

A celebratory volume of writings by the late author of Lucky Jim includes favorite pieces on such topics as hangovers, food-and-drink combinations, and (presumably) how to avoid getting drunk, in a collection complemented by cocktail recipes.

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found hereThe title refers to how we spend our retirement years, often called "golden," though in Kingsley Amis' hands anything but.At Tuppenny-Hapenny Cottage a clutch of oldsters, brought together more by ill fortune than blood or love, struggles with problems that range from penury to prostate. That's the good news. The rest is Amis as usual, providing fun for himself and his readers at the expense of his characters.

A virgin's progress amid orgy and seduction. When attractive little Jenny Bunn comes south to teach, she falls in with Patrick Standish, a schoolmaster, and all the rakes and rogues of a provincial "Hell Fire Club".

Satirically depicts the antics of a snobbish English publisher living in the United States

A Parthian shot from one of the most important figures in post-war British fiction, The King's English is the late Kingsley Amis's last word on the state of the language. More frolicsome than Fowler's Modern Usage, lighter than the Oxford English Dictionary, and brimming with the strong opinions and razor-sharp wit that made Amis so popular--and so controversial--The King's English is a must for fans and language purists.

Nearing sixty, Jake goes in pursuit of his lost libido. But is sex really worth it? As liberationists abuse him; a hostess bores him into bed; and even his wife starts acting oddly, Jake seriously begins to wonder.

Brian Leonard, a Monty Python of secret agents, meets James Churchill, a young officer at an English army base where preparations are under way for Operation Apollo. To complicate matters, Churchill has gone round-the-bend for a parole from the mental ward. Thrown amongst these loose cannons is a widowed beauty who practices "conspicuous polyandry," an unfocused psychiatrist, an unbelieving chaplain, and a charming alcoholic. "Amis delights in combining espionage, violence, love and religious skepticism. Such disparate elements, like dishpans and fire rings, challenge his juggler's dexterity. Who wins? The reader!" (Publisher's Source)

In That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis, competition is stiff for the position of sub-librarian in Aberdarcy Library. For John Lewis, the situation is complicated by the attentions of daunting and desirable village socialite, Elizabeth Gruffyd-Williams, who is married to a member of the local Council. Pursuing an affair with her whilst keeping his job prospects alive is John's predicament, as he finds himself running down Welsh country lanes at midnight in a wig and dress, resisting the advances of local drunks and suffering the long speeches of a 'nut-faced' clergyman.At times tenderly satirical and at times riotously slap-stick, Amis sends up an array of rural stereotypes in this story about a man who doesn't know what he wants.Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

A USA first edition published in hardcover. The cover and jacket are unmarked with only some minor shelf-wear at the spine head and foot. There is a Mylar cover over the jacket and boards. There is some slight discolouration and fading on the spine of the jacket and dappling between the jacket and the mylar. The pages in the main body are clean and in very good condition. GE

A classic armchair mystery, THE RIVERSIDE VILLAS MURDER has for its hero a 14-year-old boy, Peter Furneaux.Like all 14 year olds he is hovering hopefully on the brink between sexual inexperience and initiation, and in this book, under our very eyes, Peter suddenly becomes an adult!A crime, truly murderous, is committed by an unknown and almost unidentifiable assailant. Only Peter begins to guess at the truth--a dangerous truth--which leads him to the river bank by moonlight. A delightful book, and as with all works by Kingsley Amis, guaranteed to please.

In his search for fame and fortune, Ronnie Appleyard encounters an extraordinary young woman who causes him to question his ruthless tactics

Patrick Standish finds himself at the center of a whirlwind of woman trouble involving his neighbors, his coworkers, and his lovely wife, Jenny

Based on Amis' series of six lectures on science fiction in 1959, New Maps of Hell, discussion emphasizes the satirical and dystopian elements in science fiction rather than being primarily about technology.

'I suppose it was conceited of me. But it was fun. And I felt like getting a bit of my own back on some of the people who'd conned and flattered me into wasting all those years.' In this wry, piercing short story from one of the greatest of all British postwar writers, an ageing poet considers the value of his art - and of the critics who've found genius in it. Then, with his final work, he exercises a unique revenge ...

Garnet Bowen is a literary gent from Wales, author of one obscure book, disconsolate husband, father and son-in-law. When he gets an offer that requires travel to Portugal, he figures it can't be worse than London. But it is. "Kingsley Amis strikes again. Not only is he funny--and he is very funny, as anyone who has read LUCKY JIM knows--his very absurdities are profound." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

“Sex, booze, and Russian intrigue . . . A cool cocktail mixed with parts of Updike and De Vries, with a peel of le Carré.”— The New York Times Book Review Richard Vaisey is a respected scholar specializing in Russian studies when Anna Danilova arrives on campus. A visiting Russian poet with a mission more than literary, Anna challenges his integrity—and his marriage. Richard’s beautiful but unspeakably monstrous wife, Cordelia, seeks revenge on her adulterous husband, determined to ruin him by canceling his credit cards and reporting his car as stolen to the police. But Richard must face even further humiliating consequences, for the seductive Anna is also an irremediably bad poet. The Russian Girl is vintage Kingsley entertaining, thought-provoking, and wittily wise. “A brilliant satire . . . Kingsley Amis can skewer the modern world like no other writer.”— Los Angeles Times Book Review “Genuinely entertaining, and corrosively funny . . . Amis’s work is the result of beautifully organized and polished craftsmanship.”— The New York Review of Books

Book by Kingsley Amis

A retired librarian and devoted club member, Harry Caldecote's plans to enjoy his golden years are undermined by his overwhelming sense of responsibility--toward his ex-wives, bullied brother, ne'er-do-well son, lesbian daughter, and alcoholic niece

This book probes the secret of the secret agent's dazzling success dazzling success. Perusing all thirteen thrillers from casino Royale to The Man with the golden Gun, he sets out to prove that Bond is a hero cut to the measure of the twentieth century.

MEMOIRS

A novel of Britain under Russian rule. Published in paperback by Penguin Books.

On Drink

Gordon Scott-Thompson, a struggling hack, gets commissioned to write the biography of veteran novelist, Jimmie Fane. It is a task which proves to be with extraordinary and unforeseen difficulties. Fane, an unashamed snob, has many pet hates, Including younger men with moustaches and trendy pronunciation. Scott-Thompson, however, is extremely attached to his own moustache and not so particular about his use of language. It doesn't help matters that Fane's wife Joanna isn't yet sure what she feels about moustaches, but has decided views on younger men ...

"Article 22 of the Constitution laid down a standard procedure for dealing with the present type of emergency..."But alas, it is completely beyond the power of Article 22 or anything else to protect the Metropolitan Egyptological Society from the Lee Eddington Schwartz disturbance which brews suddenly on a cold winter evening, or from the pyramiding alarms and confusions which follow.Should the reader be, at first, in some doubt as to the real nature of the activities of the Egyptologists, he must not be surprised. The members' expertise in camouflage and deception has baffled many perceptive persons. The Society has been suspected at various times of engaging in espionage, in drug-smuggling, in the activity implied by its all-male membership, and even in Egyptology.What is the Metropolitan Egyptological Society? What goes on behind the locked doors of its Isis Room? What is the significance of the safeguards listed in Article 22? Those who pursue these questions in the pages of The Egyptologists will come not only to the centre of the mystery, but also to one of the most outrageously funny spoofs of the season.