Lucky Jim

by Amis, Kingsley | Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Published 25/05/2000 by Penguin Books Ltd (Penguin Classics) in the United Kingdom as part of the Penguin Modern Classics series
Paperback | 272 pages
196 x 129 x 16mm | 206g

'A brilliantly and preposterously funny book' Guardian'A flawless comic novel ... I loved it then, as I do now. It has always made me laugh out loud' Helen Dunmore, The TimesJim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons - as long as Jim can stave off the unwelcome advances of fellow lecturer Margaret, survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand. Inspired by Amis's friend, the poet Philip Larkin, Jim Dixon is a timeless comic character, adrift in a hopelessly gauche and pretentious world, in a witty campus novel that skewers the hypocrisies and vanities of 1950s academic life.

With an introduction by David Lodge