Bøger i 20th Century serien

'Buy, borrow or beg Keith Waterhouse's outstanding new novel. I can't recommend it too highly. Waterhouse has an uncanny gift for recapturing every attitude, agony and phrase of childhood and youth.' - Daily Mirror 'I wished I'd written Keith Waterhouse's first novel; and now, even more, I wish I'd written his second . . . Billy Liar is very funny: funny in a wild and sardonic and high-spirited way without malice or cruelty.' - John Braine, author of Room at the Top 'A brilliant novel, in language fresh and sweet, with characters vivid and singular in an inventive and dynamic story. It teems, it bursts with originality.' - Saturday Review 'Extremely funny . . . its lambent humour, quick-changing from robust to the delicate, is always fresh . . . should gladden the hearts of even the most exacting readers.' - Daily Telegraph Billy Fisher feels trapped by his working-class parents, his unfulfilling job as an undertaker's clerk, and his life in a dull, provincial town. His only refuge is in his daydreams, where he is the leader of the country of Ambrosia. Unfortunately, Billy's wild imagination leads him to tell lies constantly: to his parents, his employer, and his three girlfriends. On one tragi-comic Saturday, as Billy plots his escape to a life of adventure and excitement in London, all his lies finally catch up with him, with hilarious and disastrous results. A smash bestseller and one of the great comic novels of the 20th century, Billy Liar (1959) inspired an award-winning film, a play, a musical, a television series, and a sequel. This edition marks the novel's first publication in America in more than fifty years and includes a new introduction by Nick Bentley and a reproduction of the original jacket art by William Belcher.

"A valid and important human situation . . . The book is vivid with the characteristic Braine sights and smells." - Kenneth Allsop, Daily Mail "Triumphantly underlines the point that Room at the Top was no flash-in-the-pan. He alone, of the generation that has achieved celebrity in the last five years, is a genuine novelist in the great tradition." - Yorkshire Post "A gifted and skilled writer . . . His prose is at its best extremely vivid." - Richard Hoggart, The Guardian "The work of a real writer." - Peter Green, The Telegraph "Once again Mr. Braine shows his great capacity for a tearaway narrative, for crisp dialogue and stark emotion . . . The Vodi increases his stature." - London Times As a child, Dick Corvey discovered the existence of the Vodi, a race of ferret-faced creatures with luminous eyes responsible for all the misfortune and suffering in the world. Now fully grown, Dick lies in a sanitorium, suffering from untreatable tuberculosis. Unable to leave his hospital bed and convinced that the Vodi will win its ultimate triumph with his fast-approaching death, he spends his time remembering the many failures in his life that have led him to this point. But when an attractive nurse, Evelyn Mallaton, is transferred to Dick's ward and takes an interest in his recovery, Dick begins to believe in the possibility of regaining his health and defeating the Vodi once and for all. . . . The hero of John Braine's smash bestseller Room at the Top (1957) was a man determined to succeed at all costs; in his second novel, The Vodi (1959), Braine depicted a very different type of character: a man who seems destined to fail. This edition of The Vodi, which M. John Harrison has called "the defining moment of an as-yet-unreported genre: kitchen sink gothic," is the first-ever American reprint of the novel and includes a new introduction by Janine Utell.

"Remember the name John Braine. You'll be hearing quite a lot about him. Room at the Top is his first novel and it is a remarkable one . . . it's a long time since we heard the hunger of youth really snarling and it's a good sound to hear again." - Sunday Times "The most discussed, debated and lauded first novel of the year." - New York Times "This novel is brilliant . . . The observation is shrewd and the emotion and the comedy are so true it hurts." - Daily Express Brought up amid squalor and poverty in a dead, ugly small town, young Joe Lampton has one ambition: to escape the anonymous, defeated crowd of "zombies" and make it to the top. Everything seems to be going according to plan when he moves to a new city, finds a good job and new friends, and inspires the love of a pretty girl with a rich father. Only one thing holds him back: his passionate affair with an older married woman. Forced to choose between true love and his ruthless pursuit of wealth and success, Joe will have to make a terrible decision, with violent and tragic consequences. Room at the Top (1957), the first novel by John Braine (1922-1986), earned widespread critical acclaim and was a runaway bestseller in England and America, running into dozens of printings and spawning a sequel and an Oscar-winning film adaptation. Still explosive more than half a century later, Braine's classic of the "Angry Young Men" movement returns to print in this edition, which features a new introduction by Janine Utell and the original jacket art by John Minton.