Pure pleasure! A guide to the 20th century most enjoyable books - John Carey

Pure Pleasure gives us fifty of the most enjoyable books of the twentieth century, chosen on a single principle - the pleasure they inspire.

In his selection, John Carey, one of Britain's most respected literary critics, has mixed fiction, non-fiction and poetry, heavyweight authors and popular classics, and taken in French, German, Russian, Czech and American books as well as English. He has mostly avoided 'thumping masterpieces' in favour of overlooked gems which show the century's great authors in a new light. His revelatory essays lift the lid off these works, showing us what inspired them and how they were written, and placing each in its wider context.

A triumph of witty and fast-moving literary criticism, Pure Pleasure is an idiosyncratic antidote to the 'definitive' lists of twentieth-century classics. First published weekly in the The Sunday Times as 'John Carey's Books of the Century', the essays generated intense reader interest, and this collection includes a discussion of the letters of applause, outrage, debate and dissent they provoked.