The Bonfire of the Vanities

An exhilarating satire of Eighties excess that captures the effervescent spirit of New York, from one of the greatest writers of modern American proseSherman McCoy is a WASP, bond trader and self-appointed ‘Master of the Universe’. He has a fashionable wife, a Park Avenue apartment and a Southern mistress. His spectacular fall begins the moment he is involved in a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx. Prosecutors, newspaper hacks, politicians and clergy close in on him, determined to bring him down.Exuberant, scandalous and exceptionally discerning, The Bonfire of the Vanities was Tom Wolfe’s first venture into fiction and cemented his reputation as the foremost chronicler of his age.`The air of New York crackles with an energy that causes the adrenalin to pump… The feeling is perfectly reproduced in Wolfe’s novel… Electric’ – Sunday Times`The quintessential novel of The Eighties’ – The Guardian

Reviews of The Bonfire of the Vanities

"A noisy satire on Manhattan's Wall Street cash-bloated plutocracy… Hugely readable." — John Sutherland * The Times * "If there is a set-book of the Eighties, it is Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. No other novel has achieved such a precise place in the imagination of the reading classes. With his first attempt at fiction Wolfe has become the 'Dickens or Balzac of his age'; the dandy journalist has become the towering genius" * The Times * "Wolfe's modern morality tale displays the sardonic humour and sharp appreciation of the grotesque familiar to admirers of his non fiction… Savagely funny and compelling" * Guardian * "The air of New York crackles with an energy that causes the adrenalin to pump, until one has the illusion that this is where the whole of life is taking place. The feeling is perfectly reproduced in Wolfe's novel, which opens such cans of worms as racial hostility, dress codes, political labelling and the cynical opportunism that governs every action. It's, well, electric" * Sunday Times * "It's witty, sprawling and ambitious" * Daily Telegraph *