Among the Dahlias

1957

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Hogarth Press

Cover Design by Charles Mozley

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Most of Mr Sansom's collection of stories are set in present-day London - at the Zoo, an Espresso bar, a school outfitter's, and in the changing season sof the suburbs. Against these normal backgrounds, people one my recognise among one's friends - or perhaps too easily in oneself - are involved in strange encounters and wryly comic predicaments. What happens here does not happen every day; but it may happen to someone or other some day. Apart form the London stories, there are excursions into a storm on Danish seas, into another kind of sea off Dungeness, and with young lovers by the sea in a Southern Spanish town. ​

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A larger sense of human comedy distinguishes William Sansom's development - high comedy true to life, with flashes of poetry and always an undercurrent feeling for our strange, pathetic and often lovely human lot. 

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RECOMMENDED BY THE BOOK SOCIETY

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Excitingly, triumphantly good…adds a new dimension to our whole view of Mr Sansom.

John Metcalf