3 Review(s)

Tom Wolfe's enthralling masterpiece of the late 1990s - Bonfire of the Vanities ten years on.Ten years ago, The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era - and established Tom Wolfe as the prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. Now the master is back with a coast-to-coast portrait of America on the cusp of the millennium. Bold, caustic and hilarious, A Man in Full spares no one as Wolfe dissects the insatiable greed, vanity and hunger for bearings that characterise today's USA. The setting is Atlanta, Georgia - a racially mixed, late-century boom-town full of fresh wealth, avid speculators and worldly-wise politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a fabled college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real estate entrepreneur-turned-conglomerate king whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28, 0000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife - and a half-empty tower downtown with a staggering load of debt.