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The Rachel Papers

Martin Amis author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:13th Aug '03

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The Rachel Papers cover

Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and Martin Amis's celebrated first novel.



As Charles’s twentieth birthday – and the Oxford entrance exams – loom, his plans for seducing Rachel will draw him into a private collection of obsessional notes and observations: the eponymous ‘Rachel Papers’.

Charles Highway is every mother’s worst nightmare.

Precociously intelligent, mercilessly manipulative and highly sexed, Charles devotes the last of his teenage years to bedding girls and evading the half-arsed overtures of his distant parents. That is, until, he meets the aloof, wildly unattainable, Rachel.

As Charles’s twentieth birthday – and the Oxford entrance exams – loom, his plans for seducing Rachel will draw him into a private collection of obsessional notes and observations: the eponymous ‘Rachel Papers’.

WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD

'Scurrilous, shameless and very funny' The Times Literary Supplement

‘Amis has brought off the feat of satirizing his contemporaries while making them both funny and, in a bizarre way, moving’ Peter Ackroyd

Amis has brought off the feat of satirizing his contemporaries while making them both funny and, in a bizarre way, moving * Peter Ackroyd *
Scurrilous, shameless and very funny * Time Literary Supplement *
Extravagantly sexual-highly enjoyable * Evening Standard *
Amis's arrogantly assured manner is a formidable weapon, spraying the target with disdainful wit, ingenious obscenity, astute literariness, loathing, lust, anxiety and an all-pervading hyper-self-consciousness * Observer *
A magnificent novel, a masterpiece really, its prose energetic, angry, honest and so funny -- Andrew Billen * The Times *

  • Winner of Somerset Maugham Award 1974

ISBN: 9780099455424

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 14mm

Weight: 159g

224 pages