num_pages: 381
description: Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon. Long-dormant rivalries and romances are rudely awakened, as life at the Bible and Crown, the local pub, is changed irrevocably. Considered by Martin Amis to be Kingsley Amis’s greatest achievement—a book that “stands comparison with any English novel of the [twentieth] century”—The Old Devils confronts the attrition of ageing with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.
language: English
title: The Old Devils
titlecomplete: The Old Devils
characters: Alun Weaver, Rhiannon Weaver
genres: 20th Century, Literature, Classics, Literary Fiction, Novels, Comedy, Fiction, Humor, Contemporary, British Literature
ratings_count: 3639
places: England, Wales
awards: awardedAt: 504950400000
name: Booker Prize
publisher: Random House