Room at the Top (novel) death and his successful scheme to marry upwards. He is reassured that nobody blames him for Alice's death – but he knows this is wrong, and the book closes with him aware of his conscience, forced to live with his guilt and his responsibility for what has happened. Room at the Top (novel) Room at the Top is a novel by John Braine, first published in the United Kingdom by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1957, about the rise of an ambitious young man of humble origin, and the socio-economic struggles undergone in realising his social ambitions in post-war Britain. A
Perfect English Perfect English Perfect English is the second blackly comic novel by British writer Paul Pickering. It is based on his own experience as an "Internationalista" in the war in Nicaragua against the Contras. The novel was long-listed for the Booker Prize and received very favourable reviews. Pickering was for a while under siege in the Nicaraguan town of Bluefields, where he helped former Baader-Meinhof printer, novelist and playwright, Peter-Paul Zahl, build a Bertolt Brecht youth theatre after his first was destroyed in the invasion of Grenada. A central concern of the novel is to illustrate how the best intentions can