The History Man: Picador Classic

Description

With an introduction by James Naughtie Take a Valium. Have a party. Go on a demo. Shoot a soldier. Make a bang. Bed a friend. That's your problem-solving system . . . But haven't we tried all that? Howard Kirk, product of the Swinging Sixties, radical university lecturer, and one half of a very modern marriage, is throwing a party. The night will have all sorts of repercussions: for Henry Beamish, Howard's desperate and easily neglected friend, and for Howard's wife Barbara, promiscuous '70s liberal and exhausted victim of motherhood. The History Man is Malcolm Bradbury's masterpiece, the definitive campus novel and one of the most influential novels of the 1970s. Funny, disconcerting and provocative, Bradbury brilliantly satirizes a world of academic power struggles as his anti-hero seduces his away around campus. But beneath the surface is an altogether more affecting portrait: it reveals a marriage in crisis and demonstrates the fragility of the human heart.

Malcolm Bradbury was a well-known novelist, critic and academic, and founder of the creative writing department at the University of East Anglia. He was the author of seven novels, including The History Man and Rates of Exchange, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He was awarded a knighthood in 2000 and died later the same year.

The funniest and best-written novel I have seen for a very long time -- Auberon Waugh Grim wit, chill comedy and a fictional energy which is as imaginative as the tale is shocking -- A. S. Byatt Malcolm Bradbury has come up with a novel that simply must be read -- Elizabeth Berridge * Daily Telegraph * Extremely witty . . . Bradbury writes brilliantly * New York Times * Very funny . . . a quite ruthless satire * Evening Standard * Exhilarating . . . A book which captures for all time the spirit of an age -- Margaret Drabble