Cards of Identity

Nigel Dennis

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571320967
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

'Formerly, he thinks to himself, an artist took real people and transformed them into painted ones: how much finer and more satisfying is the modern method of assuming that people are not real at all, only self-painted, and of proceeding to make them real by giving them new selves based on the best-available theories of human nature...'

In Nigel Dennis's 1955 novel - instantly acclaimed as a satirical masterpiece - a long-empty country house is reopened by Captain Mallet, his wife, and his dashing son Beaufort. Their task is to prepare for the annual summer conference of 'The Identity Club': a group of psychologists firmly of the view that people can be instructed as to who they really are and, consequently, persuaded to do well-nigh anything.

'I have read no novel published during the last fifteen years with greater pleasure and admiration.' W.H. Auden, 1955
'One of the funniest, most intelligent and far-reaching pieces of satire.' Times

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Copyright