Author: Jay Ruud

By the time Evelyn Waugh published Brideshead Revisited in 1946, he had already published  string of novels that established him as the foremost of British satirists writing between the wars. In particular, his Decline and Fall (1928), A Handful of Dust (1934), and Scoop (1938) were considered minor classics in this genre. But what was to come to be considered his greatest novel, Brideshead contained little in… Continue reading Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited”

Sarah Waters is an author far better known in the U.K. than in the U.S. A Welsh author whose historical novels are often set in the Victorian period and involve lesbian protagonists, her books have thrice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and in 2019 she was named Officer of the Order of the British… Continue reading Sarah Waters’ “The Little Stranger”

You would think that a novel about political corruption by a populist politician who gets elected on the strength of wild promises but uses his office mainly for personal profit would be obsolete by now, nearly 80 years after its publication, because of course voters will have learned by now to recognize lies when they… Continue reading Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men”