Colin MacInnes - Absolute Beginners - 1959

Absolute Beginners is a novel by Colin MacInnes, written and set in 1958 London, England. It was published in 1959. The novel is the second of MacInnes' London Trilogy, coming after City of Spades (1958) and before Mr. Love and Justice (1960). Absolute Beginners is written from the first-person perspective of a teenage freelance photographer, who lives in a rundown yet vibrant part of West London he calls Napoli. The area is home to a large number of Caribbean immigrants, as well as English people on the margins of society, such as homosexuals and drug addicts. The themes of the novel are the narrator's opinions on the newly formed youth culture and its fixation on clothes and jazz music, his love for his ex-girlfriend Crêpe Suzette, the illness of his father, and simmering racial tensions in the summer of the Notting Hill race riots. This book is in good condition overall. The original cover shows some light wear. Internally, the pages are clean, with only some minor foxing throughout. A desirable first edition of a cultural classic, increasingly sought after by collectors of modern British literature, social history, and postwar fiction.