2017 Reading Challenge discussion

Decency and tradition contend with absurdity and evil and triumph at the end, which is not to say that the two foes don't win many skirmishes along the way. Tradition's victory is to be transitory, as we see in the last chapter when the politicians who saw Great Britain through the war are voted out of office and debutantes are forced to make do with the cheapest fizzy wine on the market.

The three novels were published in 1951, 1955 and 1961 and are said to be loosely based on Waugh's World War II service as a Royal Marine. Roman Catholicism, to which Waugh converted at age 26, serves as protagonist Guy Crouchback's moral compass around the stumbling blocks of bureaucracy, hierarchy and self-promotion of the armed forces.

Waugh is also the author of the perhaps more famous Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder, which I want to read next.

32, 33 and 34 out of 50 / 52.