[1] Published in 1931, it focuses on the romantic adventures and discontents of one William Atwater, together with a circle of his friends and acquaintances, in London around the end of the 1920s.

Atwater, a museum clerk, pursues a never-fulfilled relationship with Susan Nunnery throughout the novel, while other characters – painter Raymond Pringle, Harriet Twining, Lola, Verelst, the American publisher Scheigan, and Susan’s father George amongst them – carry on similar dissatisfying quests for emotional fulfilment.

Like much of Powell’s fiction, the novel portrays British society and its subtly stratified interconnections by focusing in detail on individual behaviour both in social situations–at parties, country weekends, at work–and in solitude.

Marius Hentea has looked at this era of "the Bright Young People" comparing Afternoon Men to Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh and Party Going by Henry Green.

The final section centers on a retreat to the country by a number of the principals during which several unexpected physical consummations occur and much humour is drawn from the apparent absurdity of many conventions of polite manners and proper behaviour.