The Biographer’s Moustache - Softcover

Amis, Kingsley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006548717 ISBN 13: 9780006548713

Publisher: Flamingo, 1996

Synopsis

Gordon Scott-Thompson, a struggling hack, gets commissioned to write the biography of veteran novelist, Jimmie Fane. It is a task which proves to be fraught with extraordinary and unforeseen difficulties.

Fane, an unashamed snob, has many pet hates, including younger men with moustaches and trendy pronuncation. Scott-Thompson, however, is extrememly attached to his own moustache and not so particular about his use of language. It doesn’t help matters that Fane’s wife Joanna isn’t yet sure what she feels about coustaches, but has decided views on younger men.

About this title

Review:

A good dry romantic comedy with a distinctive Amis wit. The Biographer’s Moustache is light, funny and splendid in its prejudices, and at times touching in its compassion.
Malcolm Bradbury, Mail on Sunday

The Biographer’s Moustache is rich in shrewd and mischievous social observation. The reader - or this reader, at any rate - shouts with laughter as another pretension is skewered. Amis allows his characters’ graces and strengths to emerge gradually and stealthily; this underlying texture of his writing is part of his greatness as a novelist.
Peter Whitebrook, Scotland on Sunday

Full of characteristic Amisian qualities: wit, pace, linguistic dexterity, character, thoughtfulness.
Eric Jacobs, The Spectator

Every bit as readable as any of its predecessors. Amis’s extraordinary skill at shaping material and his ear for dialogue seem to be as sharp as ever.
A N Wilson, Evening Standard

About the Author:

Kingsley Amis was born in South London in 1922, and educated at the City of London School and St John’s College, Oxford. Between 1949 and 1963 he taught at the University College of Swansea, Princeton University and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He started his writing career as a poet, but it is for his novels that he is best loved, for works including Lucky Jim, Take a Girl Like You ,The Anti-Death League, Jake’s Thing, Stanley and the Women, The Old Devils, The Green Man, Difficulties with Girls, the Folks That Live on the Hill and You Can’t do Both. The Old Devils won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1986. Kingsley Amis was awarded the CBE in 1981 and knighted in 1990. He died in October 1995.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0006548717
• ISBN 13: 9780006548713
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288