"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 dysfunction...

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 ...

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 distrus...

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 ...

From Paris to London to wartime New York, a young woman comes of age—and comes apart—in this witty novel by the author of The Man Who Loved Children.When Letty Fox first arrives in Manhattan, her goal is to escape her chaotic upbringing in London and Paris and the cynicism of her family, and create a fresh new start. This will be the existence she dreamed of—flitting from affair to affair, debating social issues over martinis, and finishing that novel abou...

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...

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 eleve...

This last great work by one of the century’s great writers is a large and original novel of betrayal and self-delusion, madness and consuming passions, that recreates to chilling effect the political turbulence of the American Left and the clamor and menace of the McCarthy Right. Not since her classic The Man Who Loved Children has Stead fashioned such willful and memorable characters as Emily Wilks and Stephen Howard. Emily is a woman of enormous but mercurial enthusiasms whose u...

Celebrated by writers including Jonathan Franzen, who said that “[t]his crazy, gorgeous family novel is one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century," The Man Who Loved Children is a 1940 novel by Australian writer Christina Stead. The harrowing portrait of a dysfunctional family, the novel focuses on the relationship between the father, Sam, a tyrannical crank far removed from the civilized man he thinks himself to be, his bitter wife, Henny, and their six chil...

Christina Stead set five of her novels in the United States, capturing and critiquing American life with uncanny sharpness. Yet her relationship with place and nation remains difficult to pin down: she resisted the label 'expatriate' and her books defy easy classification.In this re-evaluation of Stead's American work, Fiona Morrison explores Stead's profound engagement with American politics and culture and their influence on her 'restlessly experimental' style. Through the turbul...