Black Mischief
Chapman and Hall | |
Publication date | 1932 |
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Media type |
Black Mischief was
The novel was written by Waugh whilst staying as a house guest at
When Black Mischief was published in 1932, the editor of the Catholic journal The Tablet, Ernest Oldmeadow, launched a violent attack on the book and its author, stating that the novel was "a disgrace to anybody professing the Catholic name".[3] Waugh, wrote Oldmeadow, "was intent on elaborating a work outrageous not only to Catholic but to ordinary standards of modesty".[4] Waugh made no public rebuttal of these charges; an open letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster was prepared, but on the advice of Waugh's friends was not sent.[5][6]
The novel has been published in the United Kingdom by Penguin Classics (
Plot synopsis
After winning a civil war against his late father Seyid (who is unfortunately eaten by his own soldiers), Seth, Oxford-educated emperor of the fictional nation of Azania, makes it his goal to modernise his country. He recruits Basil Seal, a shiftless college friend and heir to an English political family in the country after stealing his mother’s jewellery to pay for his ticket, to preside over the newly established Ministry of Modernization, with the help of Krikor Yokoumian, a successful Armenian shopkeeper and fixer. Basil enters into the society of the capital, Debra Dowa. This consists mainly of various heads of society and government, including the head of the Army, General Connolly. Connolly was a former Irish game-warden who had taken a local wife, whom he refers to as "Black Bitch", as the Duke & Duchess of Ukaka; the Minister of the Interior Viscount Boaz, and the Earl of Ngumo; the representatives of the British diplomatic corps, interested only in the legation garden and gossip from home at the expense of any interest in local affairs, headed by a failed career diplomat Sir Samson Courteney; Monsieur Ballon, the French freemason consul, determined that all actions on the part of the British are in fact coded pieces of a great master plan and his wife, generally believed to be having an affair with General Connolly after French agents overhear a game of consequences at a party; and two members of the RSPCA, Dame Mildred Porch and Miss Sarah Tin, who the Azanians believe are there to assist in creating more efficient ways to be cruel to animals.
After a period of rapid but haphazard modernisation, including renaming the street the Anglican Cathedral is on "Place
References
Sources
- Amory, Mark, ed. (1995). The Letters of Evelyn Waugh. London: Phoenix. ISBN 1-85799-245-8. (Originally published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1980)
- Stannard, Martin (1984). Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-15924-5.
- Stannard, Martin (1993). Evelyn Waugh, Volume I: The Early Years 1903–1939. London: Flamingo. ISBN 0-586-08678-1.
- Stannard, Martin (1993). Evelyn Waugh, Volume II: No Abiding City 1939–1966. London: Flamingo. ISBN 0-586-08680-3.
External links
- Black Mischief at Faded Page (Canada)