A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

A beautifully written novel, encompassing a distinct understanding and love of the English language, A Handful of Dust portrays the emotions and actions of a small group of people in London during the years between the two wars. Waugh’s ease with words delivers humour, disillusionment and tragedy neatly, and often ironically, packaged. That the title of the novel comes from T.S.Eliot’s poem The Waste Land is extremely relevant given the similarities between the poem and the novel: both the poem and the novel wring literary hands over the state of the world and its inhabitants. Waugh leaves us wondering if the shining city sought by man here on earth is simply an illusion and if perhaps there is truth in the belief that barbarism can never be fully conquered.