A riotous satire of English university life, the engaging and high-spirited Lucky Jim had a huge impact in its time, setting the style for postwar fiction and helping to define the generation of “Angry Young Men” in 1950s Britain. But this Angry Young Man is as funny as they come, and the novel’s send-up—its explosion, really—of the codes and constraints of both British and academic snobbery has a reckless verve that is both entertaining and exhilarating.