Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Decline and Fall (1928) was Evelyn Waugh's immensely successful first novel, and it displays not only all of its author's customary satiric genius and flair for unearthing the ridiculous in human nature, but also a youthful willingness to train those weapons on any and every thing in his path. In this fractured picaresque comedy of the hapless Paul Pennyfeather stumbling from one disaster to another, Waugh manages the delicious task of skewering every aspect of the society in which he lived. With an Introduction by Frank Kermode

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Every once in a while a reviewer receives an audiobook that is an unmitigated joy. This performance by the talented Royal Shakespeare veteran Michael Maloney takes a very funny and incisive book--Waugh's (Brideshead Revisited, Audio Reviews, LJ 6/15/91) first and least flawed novel--and brings it to life with a collection of endlessly imaginative and perfectly apt voices. The novel, set in the 1920s, tells of a young theology student who finds himself teaching at a small Welsh boarding school after being booted out of Oxford for indecent behavior. How this young fellow, Paul Pennyfeather, becomes an unknowing accomplice in the white slave trade makes for hilarious listening. If your library adds only one complete audiobook this year, make it Decline and Fall.Preston Hoffman, Shelby, N.C.(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Born in Hampstead and educated at Oxford University, Evelyn Waugh came from a literary family. His elder brother, Alec was a novelist, and his father, Arthur Waugh, was the influential head of a large publishing house. Even in his school days, Waugh showed sings of the profound belief in Catholicism and brilliant wit that were to mark his later years.

Waugh began publishing his novels in the late 1920's. He joined the Royal Marines at the beginning of World War II and was one of the first to volunteer for commando service. In 1944 he survived a plane crash in Yugoslavia and, while hiding in a cave, corrected the proofs of one of his novels.

Waugh's early novels, Decline and Fall (1927), Vile Bodies (1930), and A Handful of Dust (1934), established him as one of the funniest and most brilliant satirists the British had seen in years. He was particularly skillful at poking fun at the scramble for prominence among the upper classes and the struggle between the generations. He lived for a while in Hollywood, about which he wrote The Loved One (1948), a scathing attack on the United States's overly sentimental funeral practices. His greatest works, however, are Brideshead Revisited (1945), which has been made into a highly popular television miniseries, and the trilogy Sword of Honor (1965), composed of Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and The End of the Battle (1961).

(Bowker Author Biography)