Penguin Books Australia

'At the nasty bits, you feel like someone coming across a meat-cleaver in a cot' John Carey

'Wickedly entertaining' Sunday Times

'Amis amazes at every turn' The Times

'Sometimes sharply funny, sometimes bluntly genial, altogether the most successful book he has written for years' Sunday Times

'The most important and influential critical work on science fiction' J. G. Ballard

'His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as a mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.'

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new redbrick universities. A moderately successful future in the History department beckons. As long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand.

With a new introduction by Helen Dunmore

'A genuine comic writer, probably the best after P. G. Wodehouse'  John Mortimer