Described by Waugh himself as his "magnum opus", "Brideshead Revisited" explores the relationship between the sacred and profane in a world where no-one is truly a saint or a sinner, looking at the British aristocracy in dazzling prose.
The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece-a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire.
Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities. At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh's early satiric explorations and reveals him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity.
Waugh's most deeply felt novel . . . Brideshead Revisited tells an absorbing story in imaginative terms . . . Mr. Waugh is very definitely an artist, with something like a genius for precision and clarity not surpassed by any novelist writing in English in his time. - New York Times
A many-faceted book . . . Beautifully [written] by one of the most exhilarating stylists of our time. - Newsweek
First and last an enchanting story . . . Brideshead Revisited has a magic that is rare in current literature. It is a world in itself, and the reader lives in it and is loath to leave it when the last page is turned - Saturday Review
Evelyn Waugh's most successful novel . . . A memorable work of art. - Frank Kermode