Cards of Identity

When first published in 1955 no less a critic than W. H. Auden wrote, 'I have read no novel published during the last fifteen years with greater pleasure and admiration.'\nA long-empty country house is reopened by Captain Mallet, his beautiful second wife and his dashing son Beaufort. Their task is to restore Hyde's Mortimer to its former order in preparation for the summer session of the Identity Club. And their scheme is to persuade various local inhabitants, by employing questionable methods, that they are not really who they think they are. Then the Club meets for the reading of three very bizarre papers.\nThis is not only Nigel Dennis's most famous work, it is one of the great satires of the twentieth century. W. H. Auden was not alone in praising it. The literary critic, Walter Allen, referred to its 'exuberance of comic invention', John Davenport compared it to Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Suicide Club', and "The Times" hailed it as 'one of the funniest, most intelligent and far-reaching pieces of satire.'\nFaber Finds is reissuing the following of Nigel Dennis's novels: "Boys and Girls Come Out to Play," "The Cards of Identity" and "A House in Order "