Ending Up
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  • Published: 29 July 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141194233
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $29.99

Ending Up

Formats & editions
EBook
29 Aug 2011
Audiobook
17 Dec 2020
Paperback
29 Jul 2011
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Amis's portrayal of a not-so golden old age, part of a new series of reissues of his work in Penguin Modern Classics

At Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage in the English countryside, five elderly people live together in rancorous disharmony. Adela Bastable bosses the house, as her brother Bernard passes his days thinking up malicious schemes against the baby-talking Marigold and secret drinker Shorty, while kindly George lies bedridden upstairs. The mismatched quintet keep their spirits alive by bickering and waiting for grandchildren to visit at Christmas. But the festive season does not herald goodwill to all at Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage. Disaster and chaos, it seems, are just around the corner ...

Told with Amis's piercing wit and humanity, Ending Up (1974) is a wickedly funny black comedy of the indignities of old age.
  • Published: 29 July 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141194233
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis has been described as 'the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century'. Born in 1922, he wrote over twenty novels, including Lucky Jim (1954), winner of the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction, The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize, and The Biographer's Moustache (1995). He also published several collections of short stories, poetry and non-fiction. Amis was awarded a CBE in 1981 and received a knighthood in 1990. He died in 1995.

Also by Kingsley Amis

Lucky Jim
Collected Poems
The Amis Collection
All The Blood Within Me
That Uncertain Feeling
Take a Girl Like You
Difficulties With Girls
See all

Praise for Ending Up

'A genuine comic writer, probably the best after P. G. Wodehouse'

John Mortimer

'Amis has never done better ... a very funny but also a very serious book'

Observer