Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s "The Old Devils," which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years — when "all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast" — nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon. Long-dormant rivalries and romances are rudely awakened, as life at the Bible and Crown, the local pub, is changed irrevocably.

          Considered by Martin Amis to be Kingsley Amis’s greatest achievement — a book that "stands comparison with any English novel of the twentieth century" — "The Old Devils" confronts the attrition of ageing with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.