''Eating People is Wrong '' is the debut novel by English author

Malcolm Bradbury Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury, (7 September 1932 – 27 November 2000) was an English author and academic. Life Bradbury was born in Sheffield, the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with ...

first published in 1959.

Plot introduction

Set in provincial academia (as were many of his novels which followed) forty-year-old professor Stuart Treece grew up in a bygone era of the 1930s but now finds it difficult to adapt to the changing attitudes of the 1950s. He then falls in love with post graduate Emma Fielding as he struggles to connect with her, agonising on his morals and his relationship to her. Also in love with Emma is an African Eborebelosa (who already has four wives) and adult working-class student Louis Bates, who is obsessed with her.

Inspiration

In an unpublished afterword, Bradbury explains "''Eating People Is Wrong'' was a novel I had worked on right through the Fifties – indeed from the moment, in 1950, when I went to a

redbrick university A red brick university (or redbrick university) was originally one of the nine civic universities founded in the major industrial cities of England in the 19th century. However, with the 1960s proliferation of plate glass universities and t ...

, a first generation student, and looked in wonderment at what I saw... If the central character, the 40-year old Stuart Treece, is based on anyone, it is simply a projection of my 20-year old self – though the last thing I intended, when I wrote the book, was to become a professor of literature like him, which either says a lot for the power of fantasy, or the ironic workings of fate."

Reception

* In 1960, Roger Pippet in the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' praised that Malcolm Bradbury "has written a brilliant first novel. Here is a tragi-comedy which sometimes splutters in farce (when it seems like a parody of ''

Lucky Jim ''Lucky Jim'' is a novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first novel and won the 1955 Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. The novel follows the exploits of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant ...

'') but at its best, fuses sensitivity and irony and becomes a significant social satire...Moreover the author's flair for character and his recognition of the human predicament give the narrative a saving grace. Mr Bradbury certainly has a lethal wit; but with him, familiarity never breeds contempt.Philip Larkin 'couldn't help buying it, it seemed so funny' (Letter to Monica Jones 4th August,1960 ) * In 2015, Amit Mukerjee from

IIT Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कानपुर) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was ...

wrote "A rambling novel about university life in provincial England - the title is perhaps the most memorable part of the book. Hailed as a comic novel, the story does not get too many laughs. some characters have strong comic elements - the African chief's son, Eborebelosa, who locks himself into lavatories and wishes to induce Emma Fielding to marry him by promising her "as many goats as she likes", and the dialogue is often scintillating - but the plot meanders and fails to keep interest and the comic elements are diluted by too much humdrum."This review by Amit Mukerjee was last updated on : 2015 Mar 31
Retrieved 15/5/21.

References

{{reflist 1959 British novels Novels by Malcolm Bradbury Secker & Warburg books Campus novels 1959 debut novels