Showing titles in Satire

Expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul.

It is the 1980s, and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year: newspaper-columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't; Henry's turning hospitals into car parks; Roddy's selling art in return for sex; down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock; and Thomas is making a killing on the stock exchange. But once their hapless biographer, Michael Owen, starts investigating the family's trail of greed, corruption and immoral doings, the time is growing ripe for the Winshaws to receive their comeuppance....

Be(com)ing Nigerian: A Guide is a satirical collection that takes a searing look at how different forms of power are abused, negotiated, and performed both in the private and public realm. Through attempting to satirise those who abuse privilege or power, it recognises that power can be found everywhere: in politics, business, religious institutions, and in homes. From the exploration of religious hypocrisy in How to Worship the Nigerian God, to A Letter to My Future Kidnapper, the collection is a jab at Nigerian society and what it means to be a Nigerian.

Eat your heart out, Nostradamus! There's a new soothsayer in town and his name is Scott Adams. The ruthless ridiculer of corporate idiocy, together with Dilbert, Dogbert, and the twits in management, turns his eagle eye on everything from new work-avoiding technology to sex with aliens. He predicts that (finally!) we'll learn to harness the most abundant resource in the universe: stupidity.

Colin Quinn has noticed a trend during his decades on the road - that Americans' increasing political correctness and sensitivity have forced us to tiptoe around the subjects of race and ethnicity altogether. Colin wants to know: What are we all so afraid of? Every ethnic group has differences, everyone brings something different to the table, and this diversity should be celebrated, not denied. So why has acknowledging these cultural differences become so taboo?

B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, filmmaker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film by an enigmatic outsider - a film he’s convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made, a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur 90 years to complete, B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity.

The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation...

Welcome to America. On the East Coast, homes are being swallowed by the ocean; on the West Coast, California is engulfed with wildfire. But for one family, the impending environmental disaster is the least of their worries. Party girl Cat just impulse-purchased a snake; her pious brother Cooper is wrestling with a tic bite; and their mom Ottilie has resorted to cooking with crickets. Everyone is drinking too much – and the bugs seems to be disappearing. It seems as if it's anything but blue skies ahead...

Candide, is a French satire written in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. One of the finest satires ever written, this lively tale follows the absurdly melodramatic adventures of the youthful Candide, who is forced into the army, flogged, shipwrecked, betrayed, robbed, separated from his beloved Cunégonde, and tortured by the Inquisition. As Candide witnesses calamity upon calamity, he becomes disillusioned and discovers that all is not always for the best....

Jake Richardson, an Oxford don nearing 60 with a lifetime's lechery behind him, is in pursuit of his lost libido and heads off to the consulting room of a miniature sex therapist. Not one to disobey a doctor's orders, he runs the full humiliating gamut of sex labs and trendy 'workshops', where more than souls are bared. He decks himself with cunning gadgetry, dreams up a weekly fantasy, pets diligently with his overweight wife and browses listlessly through porn magazines behind locked doors.

A collection of BBC readings and dramas celebrating the much-loved schoolboy terror. First featured in five books by Geoffrey Willans, with cartoon illustrations by Ronald Searle, Nigel Molesworth is one of the funniest comic creations in literature. A superbly satirical chronicler of 1950s England, he influenced a generation with his anarchic take on life.

When Dinah Brooke's second novel, Lord Jim at Home, was first published in 1973, it was described as "squalid and startling," "nastily horrific," and a "monstrous parody" of upper-middle class English life. It is the story of Giles Trenchard, who grows up isolated in an atmosphere of privilege and hidden violence; who goes to war, and returns; and then, one day—like the hero of Joseph Conrad's classic Lord Jim—commits an act that calls his past, his character, his whole world into question.

In this surreal work by the author of The Master and Margarita, wealthy Moscow surgeon Filip Preobrazhensky implants the pituitary gland and testicles of a drunken petty criminal into the body of a stray dog named Sharik. As the dog slowly transforms into a man, and the man into a slovenly, lecherous government official, the doctor's life descends into chaos. A scathing indictment of the New Soviet Man, A Dog's Heart was immediately banned by the Soviet government when it was first published in 1925.

One spring afternoon, Vincent Nolan, a young neo-Nazi walks into the office of a human rights foundation headed by Meyer Maslow, a charismatic Holocaust survivor. Vincent announces that he wants to make a radical change. But what is Maslow to make of this rough-looking stranger with Waffen SS tattoos who says that his mission is to save guys like him from becoming guys like him?

Jonathan Abernathy is a loser. Unemployed and behind on his student loan repayments, the only thing Abernathy has in abundance is debt. When a secretive government loan forgiveness programme offers him a job he can literally do in his sleep, Abernathy thinks he’s found his big break. Hired as a dream auditor, he finds himself entering the dreams of white-collar workers to flag their anxieties for removal at night so they'll be more productive in the day. If Abernathy can at least appear competent, might he have a chance at a new life?

This novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing emporium. Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the thin, awkward, myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle’s condescension in his aunt’s bed.

On the sunlit Greek island of Skios, the Fred Toppler Foundation's annual lecture is to be given by Dr Norman Wilfred, the world-famous authority on the scientific organisation of science. He turns out to be young and charming - not at all the intimidating figure they had been expecting. The Foundation's guests are soon eating out of his hand. So is Nikki, the attractive organiser. Meanwhile, in a remote villa at the other end of the island, Nikki's old friend Georgie waits for the man she rashly agreed to go on holiday with.

Sie sind wieder da - das kommunistische Känguru und der stoische Kleinkünstler! Auf der Jagd nach dem höchst verdächtigen Pinguin rasen sie durch die ganze Welt. Spektakuläre Enthüllungen! Skandale! Intrigen! Ein Mord, für den sich niemand interessiert! Eine Verschwörung auf niedrigster Ebene! Ein völlig abstruser Weltbeherrschungsplan! Mit Spaß, Spannung und Schnapspralinen.

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop.

Ils n'ont qu'une addiction : le sang. Mais depuis plus de vingt ans, ils ont décidé de renoncer à leur péché mignon et de se désintoxiquer. Pas facile d'être un vampire urbain au XXIe siècle ! Dans une banlieue british tout ce qu'il y a de plus respectable, les Radley essayent désespérément de se comporter comme « des gens normaux ». Mais des vampires de souche peuvent-ils définitivement refouler leurs désirs et leurs instincts ? Pas sûr.