Book Rec of the Day 4/30/2007

“A good deal of sharp wit—you can cut your hands on it if you’re not careful.”—The New Yorker

Waugh is one of the most brilliant satirists of all time; he sent up fashion (Vile Bodies), Hollywood (The Loved One), and society (A Handful of Dust). In Scoop, he targets Fleet Street, the capital of London’s newspaper business. A case of mistaken identity sends country bumpkin William Boot on assignment to Africa to cover a revolution. See why Time called Waugh “one of the century’s great masters of English prose.”

SCOOP, by Evelyn Waugh (1937; Back Bay Books, 1999)