Zuleika Dobson

A devastatingly clever satire that takes aim at Oxford's gilded undergraduate world and the absurd mythology of romantic devotion. Zuleika Dobson arrives at the university to visit her grandfather, the warden of Judas College, and proceeds to ensnare every man who lays eyes on her. What begins as a sharp comedy of vanity and flirtation escalates into something darker and more bizarre: the entire male student body, hopelessly in love, marches toward a collective act of desperation during Eights Week. Beerbohm writes with a scalpel, exposing the pretensions of Edwardian youth while crafting a darkly comic fable about beauty's terrible power. The prose is deliciously malicious, every paragraph aimed at some sacred cow of Oxbridge culture. Nearly over a century old, the novel still cuts because human foolishness in the name of love has not aged a day.