Christina Stead – författare

The devious world of international finance comes alive in Christina Stead''s enthralling epic about a ruthless bank director in 1930s ParisPraised as "a work of extraordinary talent" by the New York Times, Christina Stead''s ambitiously layered House of All Nations is an engrossing satire of wealth and manipulation. Set in an elite European bank in the 1930s, Stead''s epic spans the interwar years of a money-hungry Paris. Jules Bertillon, the distrustful and unpredictable bank director, sees every national disaster—including war—as an opportunity for riches. Adored by his clients for his ability to rake in staggering profits, Bertillon leaves no opening wasted—even if it means dealing with unsavory speculators or ruthless gamblers while his clients suffer the consequences. A stunning page-turner, House of All Nations is as significant and resonant today as it was upon its publication in 1938.

One woman''s obsession with love and fate leads her to unexpected truths about passion, sexuality, and power in 1930s LondonDriven by a belief in love above all else, Teresa Hawkins leaves her life in Australia and moves to London in search of her destiny. After years of emotional distance within her family, and despite her naïveté of the vagaries of heartache, Teresa dedicates her life to the commandment "thou shalt love." Affection-starved and painfully vulnerable, she immediately focuses her affections on Jonathan Crow, her egotistical and indifferent Latin tutor. But it''s only through another man, an entirely unexpected influence on her life, that Teresa will gain a full consciousness of her own sexuality and identity as a woman. For Love Alone is a powerful novel written in an original voice—a feat of literary narrative by one of the twentieth century''s finest writers.

At the Hotel Swiss-Touring, both the guests and the staff get tangled in intrigues and veiled confessions"If you knew what happens in the hotel every day!" Madame Bonnard, the eccentric and inquisitive owner of the Hotel Swiss-Touring—a third-rate Swiss hotel—knows her guests'' many secrets, things they wouldn''t tell their friends, family, or lawyers. They come from all over Europe in the wake of World War II, seeking refuge from their countries or their own bruised hearts. Madame Bonnard reigns over "Mayor of B" from Belgium, two guests posing as cousins, a doctor''s wife who is certain her husband is trying to slowly poison her, and Clara, a power-hungry staff member. Based on Stead''s experiences living in European hotels, The Little Hotel is a captivating portrait of what happens when strangers—and their desires, lies, and fears—live in close quarters.

Christina Stead''s unforgettable final novel—a profound examination of love and radicalism during the McCarthy eraIn the wake of the Great Depression, Emily Wilkes, a young American journalist, travels to a Europe still scarred by World War I. During her crossing, she meets Stephen Howard, a charismatic and wealthy Communist who quickly converts Emily to his ideals when the two become lovers. Upon their return to the States, they marry and settle into a comfortable life in Hollywood as darlings of the American left. Emily shines as a screenwriter and novelist while Stephen dedicates himself to the Party line—but their radicalism soon finds them out of favor and retreating to Paris, where they tragically and bitterly unravel. Published posthumously by Christina Stead''s literary executor professor Ron Geering, I''m Dying Laughing is an unflinching look at political faith and romantic attachment.

“This crazy, gorgeous family novel” written at the end of the Great Depression “is one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century” (Jonathan Franzen, The New York Times). First published in 1940, The Man Who Loved Children was rediscovered in 1965 thanks to the poet Randall Jarrell’s eloquent introduction (included in this ebook edition), which compares Christina Stead to Leo Tolstoy. Today, it stands as a masterpiece of dysfunctional family life.   In a country crippled by the Great Depression, Sam and Henny Pollit have too much—too much contempt for one another, too many children, too much strain under endless obligation. Flush with ego and chilling charisma, Sam torments and manipulates his children in an esoteric world of his own imagining. Henny looks on desperately, all too aware of the madness at the root of her husband’s behavior. And Louie, the damaged, precocious adolescent girl at the center of their clashes, is the “ugly duckling” whose struggle will transfix contemporary readers.   Named one of the best novels of the twentieth century by Newsweek, Stead’s semiautobiographical work reads like a Depression-era The Glass Castle. In the New York Times, Jonathan Franzen wrote of this classic, “I carry it in my head the way I carry childhood memories; the scenes are of such precise horror and comedy that I feel I didn’t read the book so much as live it.”

All the June Saturday afternoon Sam Pollit''s children were on the lookout for him as they skated round the dirt sidewalks and seamed old asphalt of R Street and Reservoir Road... Sam and Henny Pollit have too many children, too little money and too much loathing for each other. As Sam uses the children''s adoration to feed his own voracious ego, Henny becomes a geyser of rage against her improvident husband. And, caught in the midst of it all, is Louisa, Sam''s watchful eleven-year-old daughter.

One hot night last spring, after waiting fruitlessly for a call from my then lover, with whom I had quarrelled the same afternoon, and finding one of my black moods on me, I flung out of my lonely room on the ninth floor (unlucky number) in a hotel in lower Fifth Avenue and rushed into the streets of the Village, feeling bad. Letty Fox is hunting for a husband. Her picaresque adventures are brilliantly described in this imaginative portrayal of a woman who might have been independent, but chose otherwise.