The short stories of Kingsley Amis - the great master of post-war comic prose - are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis's short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of storytelling. In 'The 2003 Claret', written in 1958, a time machine is invented for the weighty task of sending a man to 2010 to discover what the booze will taste like. In 'Boris and the Colonel' a Cambridge spy is unearthed in the sleepy English countryside with the help of a plucky horse, while In 'Mason's Life' two men meet inside their respective dreams. The collection spans many genres, offering ingenious alternative histories, mystery and horror, satirical reflections and a devilishly funny attacks. Amis's stories reveal the scope of his imagination and the warmth beneath his acerbic humour, and they all share the unmistakable style and wit of one of Britain's best loved writers.
With a new foreword by Rachel Cusk.
- ISBN10 0141194197
- ISBN13 9780141194196
- Publish Date 2 June 2011
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 13 August 2016
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Imprint Penguin Classics
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 528
- Language English