Being There

First UK edition. 8vo. 136pp. Green cloth boards, titled in gilt to spine. Pistachio green dustjacket design by Michael Harvey printed in dark green, black, and red (priced £1.40 to front flap).

Light sunning to dustjacket spine, else Fine.

Author's third novel. Tells the tale of Chauncey "Chance" Gardiner, an improbable nobody spouting garden-variety homilies and pieties heralded as visionary, who beats a path to the White House. A trenchant critique of the politico-media nexus and a parable of our times, which saw an oaf like Trump occupy the Oval Office. Basis for Hal Ashby's eponymous 1979 film from a screenplay by the author, starring Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas (Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), Jack Warden, Richard Dysart, and Richard Basehart. A Polish academic émigré, Kosinski's other novels include Steps, which won America's National Book Award. "[A] tantalizing knuckleball of a book delivered with perfectly timed satirical hops and metaphysical flutters." –TIME