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Venusberg “Hilarious and Revealing . . . Social Comedy PRAISE FOR ANTHONY POWELL AND Venusberg “Hilarious and revealing . social comedy by a master . some of the best light dialogue of our time.” New York Times “Anthony Powell is our foremost comic writer.” V . S . PRITCHETT “Anthony Powell is my favorite author.” PETER DE VRIES “Anthony Powell is best known for A Dance to the Music of Time, a series of twelve interlinked novels that serves as Great Britain’s answer to Proust. Venusberg reads like Evelyn Waugh’s sa- tiric novels and, at its best, is exceptionally funny, the dialogue extremely snappy. Yet somehow, out of such fi gures of fun, Powell manages to construct a dark, moving, and convincing ending.” BRIAN EVENSON, The Review of Contemporary Fiction “There are chapters which are wildly funny without ever degener- ating into farce, and a whole gallery of richly comic subordinate characters.” London Times Literary Supplement “An opera bouffe plot . an abundance of richly comic charac- ters . a succession of wildly funny situations . a trenchant scrutiny of humanity as well as a general invitation to hilarity.” Atlantic BOOKS BY ANTHONY POWELL A Dance to the Music of Time, First Movement (including the following three novels) A Question of Upbringing A Buyer’s Market The Acceptance World A Dance to the Music of Time, Second Movement (including the following three novels) At Lady Molly’s Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant The Kindly Ones A Dance to the Music of Time, Third Movement (including the following three novels) The Valley of Bones The Soldier’s Art The Military Philosophers A Dance to the Music of Time, Fourth Movement (including the following three novels) Books Do Furnish a Room Temporary Kings Hearing Secret Harmonies OTHER NOVELS Afternoon Men Venusberg From a View to a Death Agents and Patients The Fisher King O, How the Wheel Becomes It! What’s Become of Waring OTHER WORKS To Keep the Ball Rolling: The Memoirs of Anthony Powell Volume I: Infants of the Spring Volume II: Messengers of Day Volume III: Faces in My Time Volume IV: The Strangers Are All Gone John Aubrey and His Friends Brief Lives: And Other Selected Writings of John Aubrey Miscellaneous Verdicts: Writings on Writers Under Review: Further Writings on Writers, 1946– 1990 PLAYS The Garden God The Rest I’ll Whistle Venusberg A Novel by Anthony Powell With a New Foreword by Levi Stahl THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 Text © 1932 by Anthony Powell Foreword © 2015 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. University of Chicago Press edition 2015 Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-31412-9 (paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-31426-6 (e-book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226314266.001.0001 Published originally in 1932 by Duckworth Reprinted by permission of Anthony Powell and Harold Ober Associates Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Powell, Anthony, 1905–2000, author. Venusberg : a novel / by Anthony Powell ; with a new foreword by Levi Stahl. pages ; cm Summary: Venusberg is a city in an unnamed Baltic state, to which Powell’s young hero, named Lushington, travels by ship in 1930 and falls in love with his own foreign Venus. This is a social comedy, and it’s packed with Nazis, countesses, misunderstandings, fatal accidents, and assassins. ISBN 978-0-226-31412-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-31426-6 (ebook) I. Stahl, Levi, writer of foreword. II. Title. PR6031.O74V46 2015 823'.912—dc23 2015014454 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper)..
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