Book description
Just when Stanley Duke thinks it safe to sink into middle age, his son
goes insane. As if that wasn't terrible enough, Stanley finds himself
beset on all sides by women - neurotic, cantankerous, half-baked or just
plain capricious. As one by one they gnaw away at his composure, Stanley
wonders whether insanity is not something with which all women are
intimately acquainted. Kingsley Amis was born in south London in 1922
and was educated at the City of London School and St John's College,
Oxford. At one time he was a university lecturer, a keen reader of
science fiction and a jazz enthusiast. After the publication of Lucky
Jim in 1954, which has become a modern classic, Kingsley Amis wrote over
twenty novels, including The Alteration (1976), winner of the John W.
Campbell Memorial Award, The Old Devils (1986), winner of the Booker
Prize, and The Biographer's Moustache (1995), which was to be his last
book. He published a variety of other work, including a survey of
science fiction entitled New Maps of Hell (1960); Rudyard Kipling and
His World (1975); The Golden Age of Science Fiction (1981); Collected
Poems (1979); and his Memoirs (1991). He wrote ephemerally on politics,
education, language, films, television, restaurants and drink. Kingsley
Amis was awarded the CBE in 1981 and received a knighthood in 1990. He
died in 1995.
