The Bonfire of the Vanities

If there is a set-book of the Eighties, it is Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. No other novel has achieved such a precise place in the imagination of the reading classes. With his first attempt at fiction Wolfe has become the 'Dickens or Balzac of his age'; the dandy journalist has become the towering genius

The Times

Wolfe's modern morality tale displays the sardonic humour and sharp appreciation of the grotesque familiar to admirers of his non fiction... Savagely funny and compelling

Guardian

The air of New York crackles with an energy that causes the adrenalin to pump, until one has the illusion that this is where the whole of life is taking place. The feeling is perfectly reproduced in Wolfe's novel, which opens such cans of worms as racial hostility, dress codes, political labelling and the cynical opportunism that governs every action. It's, well, electric

Sunday Times

It's witty, sprawling and ambitious

Daily Telegraph

Impossible to put down

Wall Street Journal

Delicious fun

New York Times

Moves with a swift comic logic . . . An innovative and imaginative and intricate plot . . .welds Wolfe's descriptions of dinner parties, restaurant games, Wall Street trading, and courthouse chaos into more than a tour de force

Time

Acerbically funny

Christina Koning, The Times

Still very funny and smartly written a good 20 years after it was first published

Colin Waters, Sunday Herald