Zuleika Dobson; Or, an Oxford Love Story

Max Beerbohm's glittering satire follows Zuleika Dobson, a former governess turned magician, as she arrives at Oxford to visit her grandfather, the Warden of Judas College. Her beauty is catastrophic. Within hours, every undergraduate in Oxford has fallen hopelessly in love with her, and when she reciprocates the affections of the Duke of Dorset, the university seems to breathe a collective sigh of despair. But Zuleika, acutely aware of her own devastating power, refuses to marry him anyway. What follows is a brilliantly dark epidemic of heartache that brings the institution to its knees. Beerbohm skewers the vanity of academics and aristocrats with devastating precision. Zuleika herself is a fascinating creation: she knows exactly how beautiful she is and wields that knowledge like a weapon, yet something in her resists settling. The novel reads like a knowing dispatch from a world that takes itself far too seriously, and its comedy endures because human vanity and romantic absurdity never go out of style. For readers who appreciate elegant satire, English wit at its finest, and novels that delight in exposing the absurdity of pretension.