ash one of P. G. Wodehouse's house parties, the chaos might resemble the nightmarishly funny goings-on in this novel from "one of the most gifted novelists of his generation" (TIME).

"Amis is a born comic novelist in the tradition that ranges from Dickens to Waugh.... [His] mercurial style...can rise to Joycean brilliance" --Newsweek

"Amis's version of the bleak and wrecky future that awaits a sex-and-drug-addicted society is...fizzing with style, [and] busy with verbal inventiveness." --Julian Barnes, best-selling author of The Sense of an Ending

The residents of Appleseed Rectory have primed themselves both for a visit from a triad of Americans and a weekend of copious drug taking and sexual gymnastics. There's even a heifer to be slugged and a pair of doddering tenants to be ingeniously harassed. But none of these variously bright and dull young things has counted on the intrusion of "dead babies"--dreary spasms of reality. Or on the uninvited presence of a mysterious prankster named Johnny, whose sinister idea of fun makes theirs look like a game of backgammon.