One of my favourite writers
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
<i>Cakes and Ale</i> is a delightfully tart, meandering meditation on what it means to be an author, and its comments on the fickleness of literary celebrity are prescient and amusing. Maugham sees clearly that books are famous because of who tells you to like them, and that authors are 'good' because they are said to be.
Time Out
A formidable talent, a formidable sum of talents...precision, tact, irony and total absence of pomposity
Spectator
[A] witty Thirties novel… Great fun
- Val Hennessy, Daily Mail
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE
Cakes and Ale is both a wickedly satirical novel about contemporary literary poseurs and a skilfully crafted study of freedom. As he traces the fortunes of Edward Driffield and his extraordinary wife Rosie, one of the most delightful heroines of twentieth-century literature, Maugham's sardonic wit and lyrical warmth expertly combine in this accomplished and unforgettable novel.