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Vile
Bodies and Black Mischief - Evelyn Waugh
Vile
Bodies is a 1930 novel by Evelyn Waugh satirising
decadent young London society between World War I and
World War II. The title comes from the Epistle to
the Philippians 3:21.
Black
Mischief was Evelyn Waugh's third novel, published
in 1932.
The
novel chronicles the efforts of the English-educated
Emperor Seth, assisted by a fellow Oxford graduate,
Basil Seal, to modernize his Empire, the fictional African
island of Azania, located off the coast of present-day
Somalia.
This
has been understood as a reference to Abyssinia and
Haile Selassie, though the author himself denied the
connection.
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Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh
(1903 – 1966) was a British writer, best known for such darkly
humorous and satirical novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies,
Scoop, A Handful of Dust, and The Loved One, as well
as for serious works, such as Brideshead Revisited and
the Sword of Honour trilogy that clearly manifest his Catholic
background.
Many
of Waugh's novels depict British aristocracy and high society,
which he savagely satirizes but to which he was also strongly
attracted. In addition, he wrote short stories, three biographies,
and the first volume of an unfinished autobiography. His travel
writings and his extensive diaries and correspondence have
also been published.
Waugh's
works were very successful with the reading public and he
was widely admired as a humorist and as a prose stylist, but
as his social conservatism and religiosity became more overt,
his works grew more controversial with critics.
Evelyn
Waugh died, aged 62, on 10 April 1966, after attending a Latin
Mass on Easter Sunday. He suffered a heart attack at his home,
Combe Florey.
Source
- Wikipedia
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