Best Selling Books by Evelyn Waugh

- El retorno de Charles Ryder a Brideshead —la elegante mansión de lord Marchmain, convertida ahora en cuartel— devuelve a su memoria aquellos tiempos, anteriores a la guerra, en que paseaba embelesado por sus hermosos jardines y salones y se dejaba sucumbir al hechizo de sus singulares habitantes. En realidad, nunca pudo Charles librarse de su ambigua amistad con el inquieto Sebastian, ni de su obsesivo amor por la hermana de éste, lady Julia, ni de la oscura y contradictoria fatalidad que dejó marcada para siempre la atribulada vida de los Marchmain con su huella de drama y desvarío. Retorno a Brideshead, una de las novelas más importantes de la aclamada obra del célebre escritor inglés, fue motivo de una espléndida serie televisiva, interpretada entre otros, por Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom y Stépahne Audran, que obtuvo un enorme éxito mundial.

With his distinctive dark wit, Evelyn Waugh''s Decline and Fall is a masterful social satire sending up the social mores of 1920s England, edited with an introduction by David Bradshaw in Penguin Modern Classics. Expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. Hi colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul. Taking its title from Edward Gibbon''s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Evelyn Waugh''s first, funniest novel immediately caught the ear of the public with his account of an ingenu abroad in the decadent confusion of 1920s high society. ''The funniest book I have ever read'' Julian Symons, The Times ''His first, most perfect novel ... a ruthlessly comic plot'' John Mortimer, Guardian ''Concocted of cruelty, bigotry, pederasty, white slavery, violence, madness and murder, Decline and Fall is fundamentally playful and side-splittingly funny'' David Bradshaw"

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh''s stunning novel of duty and desire set amongst the decadent, faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War. The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh''s novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder''s infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian Flyte at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognise his spiritual and social distance from them. Evelyn Waugh (1903-66) was born in Hampstead, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in Yugoslavia. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flags and then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited. Men at Arms (1952) was the first volume of ''The Sword of Honour'' trilogy, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; the other volumes, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender, followed in 1955 and 1961. If you enjoyed Brideshead Revisited, you might like Waugh''s Vile Bodies, also available in Penguin Classics. ''Lush and evocative ... Expresses at once the profundity of change and the indomitable endurance of the human spirit'' The Times

"In John Carmel Cardinal Heenan, Waugh found a sympathetic pastor and somewhat of a kindred spirit. This volume brings together the personal correspondence between Waugh and Heenan during the 1960s." - publishers description.

"The very model of the modern paranoid novel" (New York Times) and an ambitious work of semi-autobiographical fiction from one of England''s greatest novelists. Gilbert Pinfold is a reclusive Catholic novelist suffering from acute inertia. In an attempt to defeat insomnia he has been imbibing an unappetizing cocktail of bromide, chloral, and creme de menthe. He books a passage on the SS Caliban and, as it cruises towards Ceylon, rapidly slips into madness. Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, and loud revival meetings. He is convinced that an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship . . . until instead of just sounds he hears voices. And not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frighteningly intimate way, about him!

In four short key works, an African state goes into a political tailspin, journalism comes under scrutiny, the California mortuary business is shown in a comic light, and a man goes mad on board an ocean liner.

English Soldiers On Dangerous Missions During The World War.

Evelyn Waugh''s acidly funny and formally daring satire, Vile Bodies reveals the darkness and vulnerability that lurks beneath the glittering surface of the high life. In the years following the First World War a new generation emerges, wistful and vulnerable beneath the glitter. The Bright Young Things of twenties'' Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercise their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade - whether promiscuity, dancing, cocktail parties or sports cars. In a quest for treasure, a favourite party occupation, a vivid assortment of characters, among them the struggling writer Adam Fenwick-Symes and the glamorous, aristocratic Nina Blount, hunt fast and furiously for ever greater sensations and the fulfilment of unconscious desires. If you enjoyed Vile Bodies, you might like Waugh''s A Handful of Dust, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. ''The high point of the experimental, original Waugh'' Malcolm Bradbury, Sunday Times ''This brilliantly funny, anxious and resonant novel ... the difficult edgy guide to the turn of the decade'' Richard Jacobs ''It''s Britain''s Great Gatsby'' Stephen Fry, director of Vile Bodies film adaptation Bright Young Things

In 1930 Evelyn Waugh went out to Abyssinia as special correspondent for The Times to cover the coronation of the Emperor Ras Tafari - Haile Selassie I, King of the Kings of Ethiopia.

From Evelyn Waugh, the author of beloved novels such as Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust and Vile Bodies, this is the biography of Ronald Knox - priest, classicist, prolific writer and one of the outstanding men of letters of his time. The renowned Oxford chaplain was a friend of figures such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, and was known for his caustic wit and spiritual wisdom. Evelyn Waugh, his devoted friend and admirer, was asked by Knox to write his biography just before his death in 1957. The result, published after two years of research and writing, is a tribute to a uniquely gifted man: ''the wit and scholar marked out for popularity and fame; the boon companion of a generation of legendary heroes; the writer of effortless felicity and versatility ... who never lost a friend or made an enemy''.

""Black Mischief, " Waugh''s third novel, helped to establish his reputation as a master satirist. Set on the fictional African island of Azania, the novel chronicles the efforts of Emperor Seth, assisted by the Englishman Basil Seal, to modernize his kingdom. Profound hilarity ensues from the issuance of homemade currency, the staging of a "Birth Control Gala, " the rightful ruler''s demise at his own rather long and tiring coronation ceremonies, and a good deal more mischief.

Questo libro avrebbe dovuto chiamarsi «War in Abyssinia». Buon titolo: asciutto, fattuale, esotico. Dell''Abissinia nel 1934 nessuno sapeva nulla, anche se il paese era l''unico stato africano cooptato nella Lega delle Nazioni e il suo giovane despota era un pupillo dei media – Uomo dell''Anno per «Time» nel 1935. Ma adesso di quell''immensa piantagione di caffè stava per impadronirsi l''ultimo arrivato nel circolo delle potenze coloniali: sì, la Grande Proletaria di Mussolini si preparava a invadere, e per ciò stesso a scatenare, nei timori di molte cancellerie, un conflitto globale. Ottima ragione per spedire sul posto un esercito di inviati – pericoloso quanto e più di quelli in armi, però, specie se forzato all''inazione. I centocinquanta «embedded» al seguito dell''esercito italiano erano infatti costretti a passare le veline dello Stato Maggiore, o riferire voci incontrollabili (i duemila morti nel bombardamento di Adua, che a villaggio raggiunto si sarebbero rivelati sei). Quanto a quelli aggregati agli etiopi, se ne occupava un irreprensibile addetto stampa indigeno, che fin dal primo giorno aveva promesso notizie di due soli tipi: false – o tendenziose. Dopo qualche settimana gli inviati erano accampati in pianta stabile ai tavolini da bridge. Tutti tranne il corrispondente del «Daily Mail», Evelyn Waugh. Povero Waugh, mette a segno addirittura uno scoop, e ne è talmente geloso da scrivere il pezzo in latino, certo che i colleghi sul posto non lo mastichino, e non possano scopiazzare. Così in effetti è, ma neppure i redattori a Londra hanno un curriculum classico all''altezza, e l''articolo passa dalla telescrivente al cestino. Conseguenze: la minaccia di un immediato richiamo in patria, ma anche l''improvvisa certezza che, spostando l''attenzione da un fronte improbabile al circo delle retrovie, il libro di cui sopra si scriverà da sé. Basterà guardarsi intorno e raccontare quello che si vede – e che contiene un tasso più che bastevole di surrealtà, e di intrattenimento. Poi certo bisognerà trovare un titolo nuovo, più aderente al non imitabile contenuto del racconto. «Waugh in Abyssinia», ad esempio.

Ce retour au pays natal de Charles Ryder auquel l''auteur du fameux Cher Disparu nous convie, c''est un voyage au cœur d''un monde en voie de disparition que l''auteur pleure et nous invite à regretter avec lui. Passéisme peut-être, mais sans mélancolie. On retrouve ici comme dans toutes les autres œuvres d''Evelyn Waugh l''univers excentrique malicieux et enjoué qui a fait de cet auteur l''un des précurseurs des " jeunes gens en colère " qui ont révolutionné après guerre le monde des lettres anglaises. Raillerie et défense d''un ordre suranné.

In "Scoop, " surreptitiously dubbed "a newspaper adventure, " Waugh flays Fleet Street and the social pastimes of its war correspondants as he tells how William Boot became the star of British super-journalism an how, leaving part of his shirt in the claws of the lovely Katchen, he returned from Ishmaelia to London as the "Daily''s Beast''s" more accoladed overseas reporter.

Indtryk fra forfatterens rejse gennem Kenya, Tanganyika og Rhodesia i 1959.