Lucky Jim: Kingsley Amis (Penguin Modern Classics)

'A brilliantly and preposterously funny book'
Guardian

'A flawless comic novel ... I loved it then, as I do now. It has always made me laugh out loud'
Helen Dunmore, The Times

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons – but only if he can navigate a series of hilarious and awkward challenges:

• Staving off the unwelcome advances of fellow lecturer Margaret.
• Surviving a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's.
• Delivering a lecture on 'Merrie England.'
• Resisting Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand.

Inspired by Amis's friend, the poet Philip Larkin, Jim Dixon is a timeless comic character, adrift in a hopelessly gauche and pretentious world. This witty campus novel skewers the hypocrisies and vanities of 1950s academic life with sharp humor and insight.

With an introduction by David Lodge