The Bonfire of the Vanities

An exhilarating satire of Eighties excess that captures the effervescent spirit of New York, from one of the greatest writers of modern American prose Sherman McCoy is a WASP, bond trader and self-appointed 'Master of the Universe'. He has a fashionable wife, a Park Avenue apartment and a Southern mistress. His spectacular fall begins the moment he is involved in a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx. Prosecutors, newspaper hacks, politicians and clergy close in on him, determined to bring him down. Exuberant, scandalous and exceptionally discerning, The Bonfire of the Vanities was Tom Wolfe's first venture into fiction and cemented his reputation as the foremost chronicler of his age. ‘The air of New York crackles with an energy that causes the adrenalin to pump… The feeling is perfectly reproduced in Wolfe's novel… Electric’ – Sunday Times ‘The quintessential novel of The Eighties’ – The Guardian

An exhilarating satire of Eighties excess that captures the effervescent spirit of New York, from one of the greatest writers of modern American prose Sherman McCoy is a WASP, bond trader and self-appointed 'Master of the Universe'. He has a fashionable wife, a Park Avenue apartment and a Southern mistress. His spectacular fall begins the moment he is involved in a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx. Prosecutors, newspaper hacks, politicians and clergy close in on him, determined to bring him down. Exuberant, scandalous and exceptionally discerning, The Bonfire of the Vanities was Tom Wolfe's first venture into fiction and cemented his reputation as the foremost chronicler of his age. ‘The air of New York crackles with an energy that causes the adrenalin to pump… The feeling is perfectly reproduced in Wolfe's novel… Electric’ – Sunday Times ‘The quintessential novel of The Eighties’ – The Guardian

Reissued for today's reader with a cover by the renowned artist Seymour Chwast and an introduction by the critically acclaimed author Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The Bonfire of the Vanities is vintage Tom Wolfe at his best. "No one has portrayed New York Society this accurately and devastatingly since Edith Wharton." ( The National Review ) "A page-turner . . . Brilliant high comedy." ( The New Republic ) Tom Wolfe's panoramic novel of the go-go New York City of the 1980s has lost none of its furious luster. The portrait of power (those who have it and those who want it) and the book's dissection of the racial and ethnic tensions simmering below the city's gleaming veneer have only grown more pointed with time. Wolfe is unblinking, lavish, gleeful, and damning in this quintessential novel of the '80s, reinforcing his reputation as an unmatched chronicler of the twisted, contradictory, and glamorous abodes of power and wealth.

Reissued for today's reader with a cover by the renowned artist Seymour Chwast and an introduction by the critically acclaimed author Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The Bonfire of the Vanities is vintage Tom Wolfe at his best. "No one has portrayed New York Society this accurately and devastatingly since Edith Wharton." ( The National Review ) "A page-turner . . . Brilliant high comedy." ( The New Republic ) Tom Wolfe's panoramic novel of the go-go New York City of the 1980s has lost none of its furious luster. The portrait of power (those who have it and those who want it) and the book's dissection of the racial and ethnic tensions simmering below the city's gleaming veneer have only grown more pointed with time. Wolfe is unblinking, lavish, gleeful, and damning in this quintessential novel of the '80s, reinforcing his reputation as an unmatched chronicler of the twisted, contradictory, and glamorous abodes of power and wealth.