The Bonfire of the Vanities

Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel is a drama of ambition, racism, class, politics and greed in 1980s New York. It follows the bond trader Sherman McCoy, the assistant district attorney Larry Kramer and the British journalist Peter Fallow. Wolfe first ran the story as a Dickens-style serial in 27 installments of Rolling Stone, then revised it heavily for the book. It has often been called the defining novel of the 1980s.