Vanity fair (eng.)

Set during the Napoleonic wars Vanity Fair follows Becky as she cuts a swathe through Regency society. Thackeray paints a panoramic portrait of the age with war money and national identity his great subjects. The battle for social success is as fierce as the battle of Waterloo and its casualties as stricken. The satire is at once biting and profound sparing none in a clear-eyed exposure of a world on the make. Thackeray's scepticism of human motives borders on cynicism yet Vanity Fair is among the funniest novels of the Victorian age.