A riotous, bitingly funny, and supremely clever novel of a
twenty-year-old literature student in 1970 who's about to discover the
liberating possibilities and haunting consequences of social change.
"If beauty has gone out of the world, it has just reentered literature
through this strange, sparkling novel." --The New York Review of Books
The year is 1970, and Keith Nearing, a twenty-year-old literature
student, is spending his summer vacation in a castle on a mountainside
in Italy. The Sexual Revolution is in full-swing--a historical moment of
unprecedented opportunity--and Keith and his friends are immediately
caught up in its chaotic, ecstatic throes. Yet they soon discover a
disturbing truth: between the death of one social order and the birth of
another, there exists a state of liminal purgatory, once described by
the Russian thinker Alexander Herzen as "a pregnant widow."
As Amis deftly explores the repercussions and consequences of that one
summer, he presents us with a precise and poignant portrait of change.
Expertly written and full of wit and pathos, The Pregnant Widow is
Amis at his fearless best.