Malcolm Bradbury Books In Order

Novels

Eating People Is Wrong (1959)
Stepping Westward (1965)
The History Man (1975)
Rates of Exchange (1983)
Why Come to Slaka? (1986)
Cuts (1987)
Doctor Criminale (1992)
To the Hermitage (2000)

Omnibus

Rates of Exchange / Why Come to Slaka? (2003)

Collections

Who Do You Think You Are? (1976)
After Dinner Game (1982)
Liar’s Landscape (2006)

Plays

Inside Trading (1997)

Anthologies edited

The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories (1987)
New Writing: v. 1 (1992)
New Writing: v. 2 (1993)
Present Laughter (1994)
Unthank (1994)
Class Work (1995)

Non fiction

Novels Book Covers

Omnibus Book Covers

Rates of Exchange / Why Come to Slaka?
(2003)

Collections Book Covers

Plays Book Covers

Inside Trading
(1997)

Anthologies edited Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Malcolm Bradbury Books Overview

Eating People Is Wrong

This novel has a go at the liberal pose and extracts a mass of fun from the provincial university where the story is set. This was Malcolm Bradburys’ first novel, and is one of nine titles by Bradbury reissued in 2000.

The History Man

Howard Kirk is the trendiest of radical tutors at a fashionable university. Timid Vice Chancellors pale before his threats of disruption. Reactionary colleagues are crushed beneath his merciless Marxist logic. Woman are drawn by his promiscuity. A self appointed revolutionary hero, Howard always comes out on top.

Rates of Exchange

The hapless Dr Petworth has been dispatched for his first lecture tour of Slaka, Eastern Europe’s most rigidly controlled country. But without the British Council to protect him, he rapidly finds himself in a situation he can barely understand, let alone control. By the author of ‘The History Man’.

Why Come to Slaka?

Written by the author of ‘Eating People is Wrong’, ‘The History Man’ and ‘All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go’, this is a humorous tourist board propaganda brochure, trying to persuade people to go to the imaginary Eastern Europe state created for ‘Rates of Exchange’.

Cuts

Up in the north of England they are cost cutting at the small provincial university where Henry Babbacombe, a writer, does some teaching. And in the great glass tower of Eldorado TV they are getting ready to cut and edit a major series that will outshine ‘Brideshead’ and ‘The Jewel in the Crown’.

Doctor Criminale

Naive, anonymous, provincial Francis Jay has ambitions to break out of Camden and into the media. Writing a TV documentary about Doctor Bazlo Criminale urbane polymath and the ‘Great Thinker of the Age of Glasnost’, he steps into a world outside his experience and beyond his comprehension.

To the Hermitage

In October 1993, a novelist is invited to go to Stockholm and Russia to take part in what is enigmatically referred to as the Diderot Project. In Stockholm he is joined by various other members of the project including an academic, a lustful opera singer, and a Swedish diplomat. On the journey to Russia more is revealed about the great Enlightenment writer Denis Diderot the son of a knife maker in Langres, who went to Paris and compiled the Encyclopedia, a book that changed the world. In alternating narratives, Bradbury brilliantly recreates the climate of the eighteenth century as Diderot journeys to Russia at the behest of Catherine the Great for discussions on the nature of the late 18th century world as well as the twentieth century academic milieu. ‘An exuberant, enchanting literary valedictory.’ Washington Times ‘To the Hermitage reads like a love letter to the life of the mind from a man who, in his work as a writer, critic, academic and teacher has done much to contribute to the dizzying circulation of ideas.’ The Independent on Sunday

Rates of Exchange / Why Come to Slaka?

Welcome to Slaka! A land of lake and forest, of beetroot and tractor, of cultural riches and bloody battlefields. Malcolm Bradbury’s hilariously entertaining and witty novel, RATES OF EXCHANGE, introduces the small, eastern European country of Slaka. In less than two short weeks there, first time visitor Dr Petworth manages to give a rather controversial lecture, get embroiled in the thorn*y thickets of sexual and domestic intrigues, fall in love, and still find time to see the main tourist attractions. In the wickedly funny satire WHY COME TO SLAKA? Malcolm Bradbury offers the would be visitor, a la Dr Petworth, a wealth of information about the Slakan state, its pageantry and politics, its people and public figures, as well as some essential Slakan phrases: ‘American Express? That will do very nicely.’

Who Do You Think You Are?

In seven short stories, Malcolm Bradbury takes a subtly ironic look at a variety of targets, American academics, provincial Britain, the aspirations of social workers, psychologists and the well intentioned.

Liar’s Landscape

This final volume from the great novelist and critic ‘is essential reading for all admirers of Malcolm Bradbury and, for those who don’t know his work, an invaluable sampler of his worldly wise humor and satirical wit.’ IndependentWhen Sir Malcolm Bradbury died in 2000, he left behind a lifetime’s work: published and unpublished; fiction and nonfiction; short stories and novels; completed work and work in progress. Given shape and coherence by his son, Dominic, that work has now become Liar’s Landscape a book about books, about writing and writers, and, of course, about being Malcolm Bradbury. Taking the reader from unfinished novels to unsent letters, and from prose to plays, it is eloquent evidence of Bradbury’s versatility, wit, and passion for the written word.

The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories

This anthology is in many was a ‘best of the best’, containing gems from thirty four of Britain’s outstanding contemporary writers. It is a book to dip into, to read from cover to cover, to lend to friends and read again. It includes stories of love and crime, stories touched with comedy and the supernatural, stories set in London, Los Angeles, Bucharest and Tokyo. Above all, as you will discover, it satisfies Samuel Butler’s anarchic pleasure principle: ‘I should like to like Schumann’s music better than I do; I daresay I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all…
‘

Present Laughter

This is an attractively packaged bumper book of classic post war comic fiction from Britain, Europe and America. It has a general and individual story introduction by a noted British novelist and academic. It includes writers such as Garrison Keillor, Margaret Atwood, Woody Allen and Will Self.