Classically Yours : Reading 'Lucky Jim' by Kingsley Amis

We're picking up the 1954 novel 'Lucky Jim' by Kingsley Amis for Classically Yours: PWG's Classic Books club, as comic relief after the dystopian heaviness of the last two books.

Join us on Monday, December 15th, 2025, at 8 pm, as we introduce the book and author and start our reading of the classic.

The first session is introductory, and we will read the book over the coming weeks, discussing it every week.

Link for the Session:
https://meet.google.com/tnt-fnkp-uhp

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ABOUT THE SESSION:

A classic is a book that is best explained as 'a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.' In 'Why Read the Classics?', Italo Calvino says, 'your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him.'

So, if you read, why NOT the classics should be the question and not why, this initiative is for those patient folks who are willing to be engaged in dialogues with these sometimes daunting classics. It is a load best shared, which is why this group has been created.

All are welcome, the only caveat being that you commit wholeheartedly. The group is designed for a small group, small being an operative word. Something will and does get diluted in large numbers, which we are looking to avoid. If you find one of our planned books not to be up your alley, you can just recuse yourself, and hopefully, we can meet up again later over another book that might catch your fancy.

THE BOOK:

Lucky Jim is Kingsley Amis’s classic comic novel about a young lecturer stumbling through the absurdities of postwar academic life. Famous for its sharp wit and merciless eye for pretension, the book helped define the “Angry Young Men” movement and reshaped British comic fiction. Its blend of social satire, awkward heroics, and brilliantly observed everyday frustrations has kept it fresh, influential, and widely read for decades.

THE AUTHOR:

Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) was a sharp, funny British novelist best known for Lucky Jim, the classic satire of academic life that made him a leading voice of postwar British fiction. Over a long career he wrote more than twenty novels, including the Booker-winning The Old Devils. Amis excelled at dry, incisive comedy, poking at pretension, everyday irritations, and the awkwardness of being human.

ABOUT THE HOST:

Shankar has been a lifelong reader and aspiring writer, located in Pune currently. He also displays unreasonable fondness and bias for the Russian novelists.