Everyone loves a party: this beautiful hardcover gathers a glittering array of famous celebrations by great writers past and present--from Austen, Tolstoy, Maupassant, and Nabokov to Alan Hollinghurst, Edna O'Brien, Don DeLillo, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Momentous parties have long provided dramatic scenes in fiction, from Natasha’ s first ball in War and Peace to Darcy snubbing Lizzy in Pride and Prejudice to J. Edgar Hoover and Truman Capote rubbing shoulders in Don DeLillo’ s “ The Black-and-White Ball. ” Revelry can be revealing of character, as in Gatsby’ s extravagant bash in F. Scott Fitzgerald’ s The Great Gatsby and the decadent partying of the jaded expats in Ernest Hemingway’ s The Sun Also Rises. More decorous affairs can also reveal profound depths, as in Katherine Mansfield’ s “ The Garden Party” and the parties at the center of those two modernist masterpieces, Virginia Woolf’ s Mrs. Dalloway and James Joyce’ s “ The Dead. ”
There is room on this dance floor for humor, as well, in Evelyn Waugh’ s “ Bella Fleace Gave a Party, ” Dorothy Parker’ s “ Arrangement in Black & White, ” and Saki’ s “ The Boar-Pig. ” Glamour with a gothic twist makes an entrance in the fateful costume ball in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and in Edgar Allan Poe’ s “ The Masque of the Red Death, ” at which Death himself is a guest. All sorts of literary greats mingle in this festive gathering, a perfectly entertaining gift for readers and partygoers alike.
Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.
