Old Filth

She does fiction as it should be done, with confidence and insight * Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, praise for The Stories * What a spiky brilliant sledgehammer of a novel is Jane Gardam's Old Filth * Patrick Ness * This novel is surely Gardam's masterpiece. On the human level, it is one of the most moving fictions I have read for years . . . This is the rare novel that drives its reader forward while persistently waylaying and detaining by the sheer beauty and inventiveness of its style. One must savour every phrase. The marriage of quirky eccentricity and psychological authenticity is a Gardam technique, but here her cunning wit, moving deftly between scenes and eras, displays the tragedy of a vintage world forever passing away * Guardian * Jane Gardam, once shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is one of our finest novelists yet her work has yet to reach a wide readership. Like Samuel Beckett, she continually explores the corrosive loneliness of being alive and the courage it takes to continue...Readers will relish Old Filth for its compassionate wisdom, its comprehension of the way we lived then and live now, and for its absolute mastery of authorial tone - the product of a lifetime of experience and craft. It is a Rembrandt portrait of a novel. Don't miss it * Amanda Craig, New Statesman * I recommend it wholeheartedly for its economy, breadth of narrative, and its insight, humour and pathos -- Tracey Thorn * Mail on Sunday * Typical excellence and compulsive readability . . . the miracle of "Old Filth" is that its hero eludes sociological or psychological pigeonholing. If he is a characteristic Raj orphan, he is also triumphantly his own man * New York Times * Beautiful, vivid and defiantly funny * The Times * A magnificent, deeply moving and compassionate portrait of an era and a sentimental education * Daily Mail * Jane Gardam's work is rich and diverse and she writes beautifully. She's a treasure of contemporary English writing * Ian McEwan *

Jane Gardam has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime's contribution to the enjoyment of literature; has twice won a Whitbread Award and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was awarded an OBE in January 2009.