Title: Affairs of the heart
Description: Affairs of the Heart is a comedy, or perhaps a tragedy, of manners. The temper is satirical, the time recent, and the scene London. Wraithby, the narrator, a picker-up of unconsidered literary trifles, becomes involved by chance in the circumstances, and curious death, of Ossian Routledge, joint author of a successful series of thrillers. Thereby, he is led into making the acquaintance of Routledge's wife, his mistresses and his collaborator, Philip Ambrose, and into piecing together the pattern of their lives. He finds that, beneath the surface of the successful, and apparent harmonious Routledge - Ambrose collaboration, there existed, on Ambrose's part, a bitter, and even murderous hostility. His unravelling of the origins of this hostility leads him into some unsuspected corners of the literary world, but, in the end, to nobody's surprise more than his own, he has an answer to offer. Malcolm Muggeridge is best known as the author of Winter in Moscow, The Earnest Atheist and The Thirties. This, his first novel for a number of years, provides a vehicle for a diverting if mordant, commentary on the contemporary scene.