A riotous, bitingly funny, and supremely clever novel of a twenty-year-old literature student in 1970 who’s about to discover the liberating possibilities and haunting consequences of social change.

If beauty has gone out of the world, it has just reentered literature through this strange, sparkling novel. -The New York Review of Books

The year is 1970, and Keith Nearing, a twenty-year-old literature student, is spending his summer vacation in a castle on a mountainside in Italy. The Sexual Revolution is in full-swing-a historical moment of unprecedented opportunity-and Keith and his friends are immediately caught up in its chaotic, ecstatic throes. Yet they soon discover a disturbing truth: between the death of one social order and the birth of another, there exists a state of liminal purgatory, once described by the Russian thinker Alexander Herzen as a pregnant widow.

As Amis deftly explores the repercussions and consequences of that one summer, he presents us with a precise and poignant portrait of change. Expertly written and full of wit and pathos, The Pregnant Widow is Amis at his fearless best.