A comic novel about Edwin Spindrift, an English lecturer in linguistics who has been working in Malaya. After a collapse he is brought home to London for treatment of a suspected brain tumour. Anxious about what the doctors will find, he leaves the hospital and wanders through the city's underworld of shady pubs, strange companions and odd adventures. Burgess mixes slapstick, wordplay and sober thoughts about identity, marriage and mortality. It is a darkly funny picture of postwar London.
Quotes
The window opened gently and a still Autumn night entered cat-like. Edwin smelt freedom and London autumn – decay, smoke, cold, motor oil.
Edwin, so much himself a sham, felt a sort of kinship with the sham pleasures of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street as they travelled painfully towards Soho.