Evelyn Waugh

A Handful of Dust is a novel by Evelyn Waugh published in 1934. The title is an allusion to T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land. The novel was originally called A Handful of Ashes, but, after a dispute with his American publishers, the quotation from The Waste Land was chosen. Christopher Sykes, Waugh's biographer, notes, "the title was not apposite."