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Girl, 20
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  • Published: 29 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141961811
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

Girl, 20




Amis's tale of an ill-fated affair, part of a new series of reissues of his work in Penguin Modern Classics

Douglas Yandell, a young-ish music critic, is enlisted by Kitty Vandervane to keep an eye on her roving husband - the eminent conductor and would-be radical Sir Roy - as he embarks on yet another affair. Roy, meanwhile, wants Douglas as an alibi for his growing involvement with Sylvia, an unsuitably young woman who loves nothing more than to shock and provoke. Life soon becomes extremely complicated as Douglas finds himself caught up in a frantic, farcical tangle of relationships, rivalry and scandal.

Girl, 20 is a merciless send-up of 1970s London's permissive society from a master of uproarious comedy.

With a new introduction by Howard Jacobson.

  • Published: 29 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141961811
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

About the author

Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis has been described as 'the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century'. Born in 1922, he wrote over twenty novels, including Lucky Jim (1954), winner of the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction, The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize, and The Biographer's Moustache (1995). He also published several collections of short stories, poetry and non-fiction. Amis was awarded a CBE in 1981 and received a knighthood in 1990. He died in 1995.

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Praise for Girl, 20

'Not only a very funny book, it also hits dozens of nails smartly on the head'

Observer

'Kingsley Amis has a wicked ear ... and a stiletto pen for pseuds'

The Times