‘Six hundred and fifty-nine pages of raw energy about New York City and various of its inhabitants - a big, bitter, funny, craftily plotted book that grabs you by the lapels and won't let go.’ – The New York Times
Meet Sherman McCoy: wealthy, entitled, a New York City bond trader locked in a bubble of success that blinds him to virtually everything other than the excesses of his own existence.
Fate, however, plays its hand, exposing McCoy to the wild winds of real life: burnt-out judges, sleazy newspaper editors, cops, publicity-hungry clergy, the rank and file of high and low living – all gripped in a picaresque frenzy to unseat our self-proclaimed master of the universe and bring him down to earth.
Tom Wolfe brought all his previous journalistic skills to bear on what for many remains the quintessential novel of the 1980s. Sharp, virtuosic and grounded in solid research, Bonfire of the Vanities remains a true classic of 20th century fiction and sealed Wolfe’s as a genuine titan of American literature.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099541271
Number of pages: 752
Weight: 547 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 38 mm
A noisy satire on Manhattan’s Wall Street cash-bloated plutocracy… Hugely readable. - John Sutherland, The Times
If there is a set-book of the Eighties, it is Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. No other novel has achieved such a precise place in the imagination of the reading classes. With his first attempt at fiction Wolfe has become the 'Dickens or Balzac of his age'; the dandy journalist has become the towering genius - The Times
Wolfe's modern morality tale displays the sardonic humour and sharp appreciation of the grotesque familiar to admirers of his non fiction... Savagely funny and compelling - Guardian
The air of New York crackles with an energy that causes the adrenalin to pump, until one has the illusion that this is where the whole of life is taking place. The feeling is perfectly reproduced in Wolfe's novel, which opens such cans of worms as racial hostility, dress codes, political labelling and the cynical opportunism that governs every action. It's, well, electric - Sunday Times
It's witty, sprawling and ambitious - Daily Telegraph
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