Love Among the Ruins: A Romance of the Near Future.

WAUGH, Evelyn.

Item Number: 126490

London: Chapman & Hall, 1953.

First edition of Waugh’s bitingly satirical novella. Octavo, original red cloth with gilt titles to the spine and vignette to the front panel, with decorations by various eminent hands including the author’s. Near fine in a very good dust jacket.

In this tale, Waugh describes a world in which politicians have agreed on all major problems, the Welfare State has become a reality, and a generation has grown up with very faint memories of an earlier civilization. Recently released from Prison, Miles Plastic takes a job at a state-run euthanasia center where he meets and falls in love with priority case Clara, a bearded woman. After Clara's sudden disappearance and disfigurement by the state, Plastic sets his former prison on fire, and, unidentified as the perpetrator of the crime, becomes elevated in status as the prison's only "successfully rehabilitated inmate." A curtain is drawn on the final conclusion as Plastic reaches into his pocket for his cigarette lighter.