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The Anti-Death League

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

In this surreal comedy of soldiers and spies, Lieutenant James Churchill and his colleagues find themselves questioning their purpose. Are they for death or against it? These men of action will travel between the barracks, the lunatic asylum and the house of an aristocratic nymphomaniac in search of answers. For while few know the awful truth about Operation Apollo, the mission they are being trained for, fewer still understand the motives of the powerful psychiatrist Dr Best, who thinks he is surrounded by repressed homosexuals, and none know the identity of the secret agent among them. When the Anti-Death League is founded they are at last offered the chance to rebel and perhaps escape ...

© Kingsley Amis 2012 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

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Critic reviews

To have said so much about the human condition with such lightness of touch ... is an extraordinary achievement
Amis amazes at every turn
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I had always found this a hard read. Amis had stepped outside his usual chortlesome style, which I loved and love. And the book belongs to the sub-sub-genre of army novels, which always seem to involve far too many characters (see also Sword of Honour trilogy). But this exquisite rendition sorts out all of that. The Max strand is an early and underrated example of modern writing abt male homosexuality.

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