Party Stories

Everyone loves a party! This beautiful hardcover gathers a glittering array of famous celebrations throughout classic literature–from Austen, Tolstoy, and Maupassant 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 to Lizzie meeting Darcy in to J. Edgar Hoover consorting with Truman Capote in Don DeLillo’s
‘The Black and White Ball’. Revelry can be revealing of character, as in Jay Gatsby’s extravagant bash in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s and the decadent partying of the jaded expats in Ernest Hemingway’s. More decorous affairs can conceal profound depths, as in Katherine Mansfield’s
‘The Garden Party’ and the parties at the centre of two modernist masterpieces, Virginia Woolf’s and James Joyce’s
‘The Dead’. Glamour with a gothic twist makes an appearance here in the fancy dress ball at Manderley from Daphne Du Maurier’s and in Edgar Allan Poe’s
‘The Masque of the Red Death’, at which Death himself is a guest. But there is room on this dance floor for humour as well, in Evelyn Waugh’s
‘Bella Fleace Gave a Party’, Dorothy Parker’s
‘Arrangement in Black & White’, Saki's
‘A Boar Pig’ and Vladimir Nabokov’s
‘Pnin Gives a Party’. All kinds of literary greats consort in this festive gathering, a perfect gift for readers and partygoers alike.