{"product_id":"lucky-jim-paperback","title":"Lucky Jim - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eKingsley Amis\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eKeith Gessen\u003c\/b\u003e (Introduction by)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA hilarious satire about college life and high class manners, this is a classic of postwar English literature.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRegarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, \u003ci\u003eLucky Jim\u003c\/i\u003e 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMore than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, \u003ci\u003eLucky Jim\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\"\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eKingsley Amis \u003c\/b\u003e(1922-1995) was a popular and prolific British novelist, poet, and critic, widely regarded as one of the greatest satirical writers of the twentieth century. Born in suburban South London, the only child of a clerk in the office of the mustard-maker Colman's, he went to the City of London School on the Thames before winning an English scholarship to St. John's College, Oxford, where he began a lifelong friendship with fellow student Philip Larkin. Following service in the British Army's Royal Corps of Signals during World War II, he completed his degree and joined the faculty at the University College of Swansea in Wales. \u003ci\u003eLucky Jim\u003c\/i\u003e, his first novel, appeared in 1954 to great acclaim and won a Somerset Maugham Award. Amis spent a year as a visiting fellow in the creative writing department of Princeton University and in 1961 became a fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, but resigned the position two years later, lamenting the incompatibility of writing and teaching (\"I found myself fit for nothing much more exacting than playing the gramophone after three supervisions a day\"). Ultimately he published twenty-four novels, including science fiction and a James Bond sequel; more than a dozen collections of poetry, short stories, and literary criticism; restaurant reviews and three books about drinking; political pamphlets and a memoir; and more. Amis received the Booker Prize for his novel \u003ci\u003eThe Old Devils\u003c\/i\u003e in 1986 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990. He had three children, among them the novelist Martin Amis, with his first wife, Hilary Anne Bardwell, from whom he was divorced in 1965. After his second, eighteen-year marriage to the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard ended in 1983, he lived in a London house with his first wife and her third husband. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eKeith Gessen\u003c\/b\u003e is a founding editor of \u003ci\u003eN+1\u003c\/i\u003e and the author of \u003ci\u003eAll the Sad Young Literary Men \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eA Terrible Country\u003c\/i\u003e. Among his translations from the Russian are \u003ci\u003eVoices from Chernobyl\u003c\/i\u003e by Svetlana Alexievich and, with Anna Summers, \u003ci\u003eThere Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales\u003c\/i\u003e by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 296\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.57 x 8.01 x 5.1 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 02, 2012\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42730412474431,"sku":"9781590175750","price":20.34,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0105\/8226\/1823\/files\/aaf3f929b0c49fefe38dc30f07924890.webp?v=1765125862","url":"https:\/\/dhlswag.com\/products\/lucky-jim-paperback","provider":"BBB","version":"1.0","type":"link"}