Jubb (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

C. L. Jubb is thirty-six, married, gainfully employed, and active in his community, both in local government and as a volunteer youth leader working with disadvantaged boys. But as he narrates the story of his downfall, we begin to see that he is other things as well: a voyeur, a fetishist, a racist, an admirer of Mussolini, and above all, a man obsessed by his sexual fantasies. With its unforgettable protagonist - odious yet pitiable, vile yet oddly sympathetic - Keith Waterhouse’s third novel is both a gripping case study of a social and sexual misfit and an unsettling but wickedly funny social satire. Jubb (1963) was a departure from Waterhouse’s first two novels, the classic of childhood There is a Happy Land and the comic masterpiece Billy Liar, but like those works it was widely acclaimed by critics, who compared it favorably with Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. This edition, the first in decades, features a new introduction by Alice Ferrebe and a reproduction of the original dust jacket art.

‘Magnificent … an achievement that puts Mr. Waterhouse above all his contemporary novelists.’ - Washington D.C. Star

‘An important book and one of the finest in months … a fascinating novel.’ - Cleveland Plain Dealer

‘[A]dmirable … indeed a very funny book.’ - New York Times