To keep the ball rolling

the long version

"To earn the reputation of a literary giant within the generation of Waugh, Orwell, and Greene is no mean feat. To do so with the grace and genius that characterized Anthony Powell - whose twelve-volume A Dance to the Music of Time is possibly the only English-language work to match the majestic scope of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past - is nothing short of spectacular. Yet Powell himself remains absent from his writing; he was, said the New York Times, "a writer of mordant succinctness who rewards the reader while revealing little of himself."" "Powell did eventually reveal himself in four volumes of memoirs published between 1976 and 1982 with the titles of Infants of the Spring, Messengers of Day, Faces in My Time, and The Strangers All Are Gone. This edition of Anthony Powell's memoirs is an abridged and revised version of those volumes."--BOOK JACKET.