A Handful of Dust. Evelyn Waugh.

A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh
1934

Tony Last and his wife Brenda--bored aristocrats. She goes up to London and takes a lover. He has no idea she is being unfaithful. Their son is killed in a hunting accident. She makes the break. Wants a divorce. He is shocked. He offers her 500 pounds a year. She wants 2000. He finally says he will go away and when he returns he will divorce her with no settlement. She is broke.

He goes to South America to explore. He catches a fever and hallucinates. He is found by a lonely white trader who spends his time reading Dickens. While Tony sleeps off the effects of a drugged drink, three Englishmen come looking for him. They leave, taking his watch, thinking he has died.

Another generation of Lasts takes over the family seat at Hetton. They have provided a monument commemorating his birth and death.

Why read it? A portrait of the decadent aristocratic world of the 1930s.