> Skip to content
  • Published: 28 April 1994
  • ISBN: 9780140433920
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 816
  • RRP: $22.99

The Way We Live Now





A radical exploration of the dangers associated with speculative capitalism, this is a fascinating satire about a society on the verge of moral bankruptcy.

Augustus Melmotte is a fraudulent foreign financier who preys on dissolute nobility - using charm to tempt the weak into making foolish investments in his dubious schemes. Persuaded to put money into a notional plot to run a railroad from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, the capricious gambler Felix Carbury soon becomes one of his victims. But as Melmotte climbs higher in society, his web of deceit - which also draws in characters as diverse as his own daughter Marie and Felix's mother, the pulp novelist Lady Carbury - begins to unravel. A radical exploration of the dangers associated with speculative capitalism, this is a fascinating satire about a society on the verge of moral bankruptcy.

  • Published: 28 April 1994
  • ISBN: 9780140433920
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 816
  • RRP: $22.99

Other books in the series

Emma
Persuasion
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
On Sparta