Penguin Pockets: The Importance of Being Earnest

In a world obsessed with appearances, telling the truth can be surprisingly inconvenient. In The Importance of Being Earnest , Oscar Wilde turns love, courtship and social respectability into a sparkling game of deception, as two men invent alter egos to escape the expectations placed upon them. Mistaken identities, romantic entanglements and outrageous social rules collide in a comedy that skewers the performance of respectability and the absurdity of trying to live up to other people’s ideas of who we should be. With its razor-sharp wit and unforgettable characters, Wilde’s enduring classic remains as relevant to our age of carefully curated identities as it was to Victorian society.