A delicious satire of provincial middle-class life in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, this novel chronicles the rise and fall and rise of Mrs. Emmeline Lucas of Riseholm, known to her most intimate friends as Lucia. When her status as social queen of the village is threatened by the arrival of Olga Braceley, an opera singer without scruples, Lucia begins a lengthy and often hilarious campaign to derail the career of her rival. The crazy antics of her family and friends may hinder her plans, however, as her husband Philip decides to start his own printing press to disseminate his wild political theories, and her neighbor Daisy Quantock brings home a guru from India who gets the whole town hooked on yoga. Great fun from beginning to end, this book mocks the flightiness and shallowness of social climbing. Una satira deliciosa de la vida provincial de la clase media en Inglaterra en los anos veinte y treinta, esta novela narra el ascenso y la caida y el ascenso de Sra. Emmeline Lucas de Riseholm, conocida por sus amigos mas intimos como Lucia. Cuando su estatus como la reina social del pueblo se ve amenazado por la llegada de Olga Braceley, una cantante de opera sin escrupulos, Lucia comienza una campana larga y a menudo hilarante para descarrilar la carrera de su rival. Sin embargo, las locuras de su familia y sus amigos tal vez obstaculicen sus planes; su esposo Philip decide iniciar su propia imprenta para difundir sus locas teorias politicas en el pueblo y su vecina Daisy Quantock trae a casa un guru de la India que hace que todo el pueblo se obsesione con el yoga. Muy divertido desde al principio hasta al fin, este libro se burla de la frivolidad y superficialidad de escalar clase social.

E. F. Benson was an English writer best known for his Lucia series. At one point he served as mayor of Rye in East Sussex, the town upon which the fictional setting of the Lucia books, Tilling, is based. José C. Vales is a translator whose previous translations from English to Spanish include Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons and The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty.