A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
... I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning, striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
The epigraph to this great novel is taken from Eliot's
The Waste Land. Waugh then proceeds to be as good as the implied promise of the quotation and shows us great fear in small things. From my admittedly limited survey, I suggest Waugh as the greatest British twentieth century novelist. He has to be on this list and this is the narrow victor as my favourite. Tomorrow I may feel differently, but by then it will be too late. As an aside I am surprised to discover that it has never been the choice of a castaway on
Desert Island Discs although George Malcolm and Edward Fox were allowed to cheat and select a Waugh omnibus . Not the spirit of the exercise at all.
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