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The Old Devils de Kingsley Amis

The Old Devils

Autor Kingsley Amis
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 5 feb 2004

Bătrânețea nu aduce întotdeauna înțelepciune sau calm; uneori, ea doar accelerează viciile și rafinează resentimentele. În The Old Devils, remarcăm cum Kingsley Amis surprinde acel moment bizar al existenței în care, dintr-odată, „seara începe să se instaleze imediat după micul dejun”. Suntem de părere că acest roman, distins cu Booker Prize în 1986, reprezintă apogeul stilistic al unui autor care a refuzat să privească senectutea prin lentile roz. Povestea se concentrează pe un grup de prieteni galezi a căror viață ordonată, împărțită între bârfe și pub-ul local, este dată peste cap de revenirea spectaculoasă a lui Alun Weaver, un om de litere celebru, și a fermecătoarei sale soții. Dacă Ending Up v-a captivat prin modul în care descrie dizarmonia locuirii la comun a unor oameni dificili, The Old Devils extinde experiența în direcția unei analize profunde a identității naționale și a nostalgiei care refuză să moară. Este o lucrare care se distanțează de satira pură din I Want It Now sau de tonul detectivistic din The Riverside Villas Murder, alegând în schimb o onestitate brutală despre cum timpul erodează corpul, dar lasă intacte rivalitățile și pasiunile nerezolvate. Amis construiește aici o lume în care alcoolul nu este doar un accesoriu, ci un personaj în sine, amintindu-ne de obsesiile sale din Everyday Drinking, însă integrate acum într-o structură narativă densă și emoționantă.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780099461050
ISBN-10: 0099461056
Pagini: 400
Dimensiuni: 129 x 198 x 24 mm
Greutate: 0.28 kg
Editura: Vintage Publishing
Locul publicării:United Kingdom

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această carte cititorilor care apreciază proza britanică de o inteligență sclipitoare, unde umorul negru maschează o profundă melancolie. Veți descoperi o radiografie onestă a bătrâneții, scrisă fără menajamente, dar cu o empatie neașteptată. Este lectura ideală pentru cei care vor să exploreze complexitatea prieteniilor de o viață și modul în care trecutul revine mereu să ne bântuie prezentul.

Despre autor

Sir Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) a fost unul dintre cei mai influenți romancieri, poeți și critici britanici ai secolului XX. Recunoscut drept un maestru al prozei comice postbelice, a debutat spectaculos cu „Lucky Jim”, devenind o voce centrală a generației sale. Opera sa vastă cuprinde peste 20 de romane în care satira socială se împletește cu observația psihologică fină. Tată al scriitorului Martin Amis, Kingsley a fost inclus de The Times în topul celor mai importanți scriitori britanici de după 1945, The Old Devils rămânând piesa centrală a moștenirii sale literare.

Descriere

Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon.

Notă biografică

Kingsley Amis (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. Lucky Jim, 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 The Old Devils 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.

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of many novels, including The Book of Evidence, The Untouchable, Eclipse, The Sea (winner of the Man Booker Prize), and most recently, Ancient Light. As Benjamin Black he has written six crime novels, including the recently published Vengeance.

Recenzii

Winner of the 1986 Booker Prize

“Kingsley Amis’s most ambitious book is neither a sendup nor an exercise in some established genre. It sets forth a large cast of characters rendered in depth as well as on the surface. The Old Devils is also Mr. Amis’s most inclusive novel, encompassing kinds of feelings and tone that move from sardonic gloom to lyric tenderness.” —The New York Times

 
“The talk is also exceedingly sharp and funny, and it brings the characters to life as only pungent dialogue can. His prose is as tart as ever, which is of course good news, but the softening effect of his feelings for his old devils is even more welcome. More than in any of his previous novels, Kingsley Amis has allowed himself to show a bit of heart; it becomes him.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

The book is, of course, highly comic in parts, but it is not a cosy read. The comedy has a crematorium whiff, dealing with such unmentionable topics as death, old age, hate, the ghastliness of marriages, the awfulness of the Welsh and the decay of the flesh.” – The Times, London
 
“For long time admirers of the Amis of Luck Jim and after, The Old Devils is welcomed evidence that the master remains masterful, able now to conjoin the mischievous with the mellow. As always, he is an insightful guide through the terrain where what is said is not meant and what is felt is not said, but where much of life is lived.” – The Los Angeles Times
 
“The old, robust masculine tradition of British comedy from Fielding and Smollett continues in our own vernacular.” – V.S. Prichett, The New Yorker