Cards of Identity

''Formerly, he thinks to himself, an artist took real people and transformed them into painted ones: how much finer and more satisfying is the modern method of assuming that people are not real at all, only self-painted, and of proceeding to make them real by giving them new selves based on the best-available theories of human nature...''

In Nigel Dennis''s 1955 novel - instantly acclaimed as a satirical masterpiece - a long-empty country house is reopened by Captain Mallet, his wife, and his dashing son Beaufort. Their task is to prepare for the annual summer conference of ''The Identity Club'': a group of psychologists firmly of the view that people can be instructed as to who they really are and, consequently, persuaded to do well-nigh anything.

''I have read no novel published during the last fifteen years with greater pleasure and admiration.'' W.H. Auden, 1955
''One of the funniest, most intelligent and far-reaching pieces of satire.'' Times