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    Agents and Patients: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Agents and Patients: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Agents and Patients: A Novel
    Ebook246 pages3 hours

    Agents and Patients: A Novel

    By Anthony Powell

    3/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Unsavory artists, titled boobs, and charlatans with an affinity for Freud—such are the oddballs whose antics animate the early novels of the late British master Anthony Powell. A genius of social satire delivered with a very dry wit, Powell builds his comedies on the foibles of British high society between the wars, delving into subjects as various as psychoanalysis, the film industry, publishing, and (of course) sex. More explorations of relationships and vanity than plot-driven narratives, these slim novels reveal the early stirrings of the unequaled style, ear for dialogue, and eye for irony that would reach their caustic peak in Powell’s epic A Dance to the Music of Time.
     
    In Agents and Patients, we return to London with the newly wealthy, memorably named Blore-Smith: an innocent, decent enough chap . . . and a drip. Vulnerable to the machinations of those with less money and more lust, Blore-Smith falls victim to two con artists whose ploys carry him through to the art galleries and whorehouses of Paris, Berlin, and beyond.
     
    Written from a vantage point both high and necessarily narrow, Powell’s early novels nevertheless deal in the universal themes that would become a substantial part of his oeuvre: pride, greed, and what makes people behave as they do. Filled with eccentric characters and piercing insights, Powell’s work is achingly hilarious, human, and true.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateMar 26, 2014
    ISBN9780226137490
    Unavailable
    Agents and Patients: A Novel

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