“Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.”
The Way of All Flesh is a novel by English author Samuel Butler, published in 1903, a year after his death. A semi-autobiographical work, it is a brilliant, subversive critique of Victorian-era social hypocrisy.
Telling the story of four generations of the Pontifex family, written with wit and irony, the novel is sharply critical of contemporary values and beliefs. A finely nuanced, enduring literary classic, and an unmissable read.
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