Promotion

25% off sitewide. Make sure to order by 11:59am, 12/12 for holiday delivery! Code BEST25 automatically applied at checkout!

Go to Hachette Book Group home

Search

Site Preferences

Show prices in:

By clicking “Accept,” you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies on your device as set forth in our Cookie Policy and our Privacy Policy. Please note that certain cookies are essential for this website to function properly and do not require user consent to be deployed.

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Evelyn Waugh

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Dec 11, 2012
Page Count
224 pages
Publisher
Back Bay Books
ISBN-13
9780316216661

Price

$19.99

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $19.99
  2. Hardcover $29.99
  3. Audiobook Download (Unabridged)

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around December 11, 2012. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Buy from Other Retailers:

“The very model of the modern paranoid novel” (New York Times) and an ambitious work of semi-autobiographical fiction from one of England’s greatest novelists.


Gilbert Pinfold is a reclusive Catholic novelist suffering from acute inertia. In an attempt to defeat insomnia he has been imbibing an unappetizing cocktail of bromide, chloral, and creme de menthe. He books a passage on the SS Caliban and, as it cruises towards Ceylon, rapidly slips into madness.


Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, and loud revival meetings. He is convinced that an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship . . . until instead of just sounds he hears voices. And not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frighteningly intimate way, about him!

Genre:

  • "The very model of the modern paranoid novel."
    John Leonard, New York Times
  • "Unblinking candor informs Waugh's dark, comic vision."
    William Boyd, Daily Telegraph
  • "Waugh's 'portrait of the artist in middle age' . . . is a genuine gothic horror, a gargoyle to terrify anyone who has ever contemplated a literary career. . . . The acid bath so often prepared for others has now found its way into his own tub. . . . Waugh draws an intimate picture of a distinguished author at bay."
    Gerald Sykes, New York Times Book Review
  • "The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a masterpiece of self-portraiture, one of the very best in English fiction."
    John Bailey
  • "A masterpiece. . . . Waugh's clear-sightedness about himself . . . is something which, in this taut, brilliantly phrased and crafted story, is itself an assertion of order out of chaos."
    A. N. Wilson

You May Also Like

Madwoman
Madwoman $18.99 $24.99 CAD
Learned by Heart
Learned by Heart $18.99
How to Be Eaten
How to Be Eaten $18.99 $24.99 CAD
Post-traumatic
Post-traumatic $19.99 $25.99 CAD
Blackwood
Blackwood $15.99 $21.99 CAD

Evelyn Waugh

About the Author

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), whom Time called “one of the century’s great masters of English prose,” wrote several widely acclaimed novels as well as volumes of biography, memoir, travel writing, and journalism. Three of his novels, A Handful of Dust, Scoop, and Brideshead Revisited, were selected by the Modern Library as among the 100 best novels of the twentieth century.

Learn more about this author