Vile Bodies

This early novel by Evelyn Waugh, set among the bright young things of fashionable London society in the 1920's, portrays a world of carefree, rootless, and frivolous young people who put most of their effort into amusing themselves. The story of Adam Fenwick-Symes, who devotes all his efforts to accumulating enough money to win the heart of Nina, it ends with a sentimentally traditional English Christmas, as a satiric counterpoint to the debased values of the characters. Written with the sharp eye and savage wit for which he became famous, it is one of Waugh's most brutally funny books.