Room at the Top

Brought up amid squalor and poverty in a dead, ugly small town, young Joe Lampton has one ambition: to escape the anonymous, defeated crowd of “zombies” and make it to the top. Everything seems to be going according to plan when he moves to a new city, finds a good job and new friends, and inspires the love of a pretty girl with a rich father. Only one thing holds him back: his passionate affair with Alice Aisgill, an older married woman. Forced to choose between true love and his dream of wealth and success, Joe will have to make a terrible decision, with violent and tragic consequences.


Room at the Top (1957), the first novel by John Braine (1922-1986), earned widespread critical acclaim and was a runaway bestseller in England and America, running into dozens of editions and spawning a sequel and an Oscar-winning film adaptation. Still explosive more than half a century later, Braine’s classic of the “Angry Young Men” movement returns to print in this edition, which features a new introduction by Janine Utell and the original jacket art by John Minton.


“This novel is brilliant . . . The observation is shrewd and the emotion and the comedy are so true it hurts.” - Daily Express


“The most discussed, debated and lauded first novel of the year.” - New York Times

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“Remember the name John Braine. You’ll be hearing quite a lot about him. Room at the Top is his first novel and it is a remarkable one . . . it’s a long time since we heard the hunger of youth really snarling and it’s a good sound to hear again.” - Sunday Times