The Birthday Party

(Paperback)

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Description

A brilliant modern fairy tale by the highly praised author of Little Infamies and The Maze. It is the summer of 1975. As dawn breaks on a small private island off the Mediterranean coast, Marco Timoleon, an aging tycoon, wakes up to see the final preparations for his troubled daughter's twenty-fifth birthday party. Having found out that she is pregnant by a man he doesn't approve of, he secretly intends to persuade her to terminate the pregnancy- the family doctor stands by to perform the operation on the spot. But as the day unfolds, his plan is put to the test and comes to an unexpected conclusion.

Reviews

Both a serious meditation on masculinity and commercial power...and a rollicking beach-read...fans of Karnezis will not be disappointed. Marco is a huge and splendidly flawed hero for a five-star novel * The Times *
Such careful and subtle patterning confirms Karnezis as a novelist of unusual gifts * Financial Times *
Karnezis's wise fable gestures towards a dawning era, in which vacuous yet powerful celebrity finds its ultimate apotheosis * Guardian *
In prose as clear as the Mediterranean Sea...this is a richly detailed portrait of a man who could so easily have been sketched as a cartoon villain. It's a story about the power of stories themselves, and the countless ways we can all rewrite our pasts and twist our futures * Daily Mail *
The reader grows to love his detestable characters and this, along with the way he takes the mundane and cranks it up into madness, is the secret of Karnezis' appeal * Independent on Sunday *

Author Bio

Panos Karnezis was born in Greece in 1967 and came to England in 1992. He studied engineering at Oxford and worked in industry before starting to write in English. He studied for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His first book, Little Infamies (2002) is a collection of connected short stories set in a nameless Greek village, and his second book, The Maze (2004) is a novel set in Anatolia in 1922. It was shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award. Panos Karnezis lives in London.