Decline and Fall

A sharp and witty 1920s satire for fans of classic British literature, following eccentric characters and social absurdities with Evelyn Waugh’s trademark humour.

“Irresistible” —New York Times

First published in 1928, Decline and Fall is a satirical novel following the unfortunate chronicles of Paul Pennyfeather after he is expelled the University of Oxford. He soon ends up working as a schoolmaster at a boys’ preparatory school in Wales where he meets a host of eccentric characters who will go on to define the course of the rest of his life.

• "Irresistible....One of Waugh's best."
  New York Times Book Review
• "A savagely comic masterpiece."
  Times Literary Supplement
• "A world of anarchic fantasy, floodlit with a bland, devastating brilliance....Waugh's people were of two classes, both of whom he knew intimately: the giddy rich and adventurers of vast caddishness....The characters reeled their lunatic way, with sublime insouciance or sublime rascality, through a harlequinade ending in gruesome but hilarious calamity."
  Charles J. Rolo, Atlantic Monthly
• "Decline and Fall is that all-too-rare phenomenon, a good nonsense novel. Its author has had the happy inspiration to take nothing seriously, and least of all himself. The result is a book which makes more sense than most."
  T.S. Matthews, The New Republic
• "Surely one of the finest satirical novels of our time, in whcih uplift, religion, romance, and personal animus do not dissipate the satiric intention."
  Ernest Jones, The Nation