The Little Hotel: Text Classics
Oct 2016 · Sold by Penguin Group Australia
Ebook
240
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About this ebook
‘One of Australia’s greatest novelists puts together...a crew as sad, funny and perverse as any ever gathered.’ Time
After the Second World War, bizarre characters from across the ruined continent have gathered at the ‘fourth-rate’ Hotel Swiss-Touring by Lake Geneva. Some are residents, while other guests have come for the season. In the claustrophobic atmosphere of the little hotel, their eccentricities and their desperation—their jealousies and vindictiveness—are all too apparent.
First published in 1973, shortly before Christina Stead’s return to Australia, The Little Hotel is a sharp, witty satire of changing lives in postwar Europe.
Christina Stead was born in 1902 in Sydney. Stead’s first books, The Salzburg Tales and Seven Poor Men of Sydney, were published in 1934 to positive reviews in England and the United States. Her fourth work, The Man Who Loved Children, has been hailed as a ‘masterpiece’ by Jonathan Franzen, among others. In total, Stead wrote almost twenty novels and short-story collections. Stead returned to Australia in 1969 after forty years abroad for a fellowship at the Australian National University. She resettled permanently in Australia in 1974 and was the first recipient of the Patrick White Award that year. Christina Stead died in Sydney in 1983, aged eighty. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential Australian authors of the twentieth century.
‘This neat little volume will appeal to readers who enjoy historical fiction with a good dose of satire. Classic fiction from an
award-winning Australian author.’ BookMooch
‘How to describe it? It’s like a meteorite from Krypton landed on Ozlit’s bindi-eye-riddled lawn, greenly glowing. Or perhaps a mosaic of imagined intimacies...Stead is a recording angel of the threadbare European middle class of the postwar years.’ Saturday Paper
‘In this highly confined setting, Stead creates a busy mini-Europe of petty and poignant crises, or perhaps a molehill of The Magic Mountain. This is an excellent place for the Stead novice to begin enjoying her artistry.’ STARRED REVIEW, Kirkus Reviews
After the Second World War, bizarre characters from across the ruined continent have gathered at the ‘fourth-rate’ Hotel Swiss-Touring by Lake Geneva. Some are residents, while other guests have come for the season. In the claustrophobic atmosphere of the little hotel, their eccentricities and their desperation—their jealousies and vindictiveness—are all too apparent.
First published in 1973, shortly before Christina Stead’s return to Australia, The Little Hotel is a sharp, witty satire of changing lives in postwar Europe.
Christina Stead was born in 1902 in Sydney. Stead’s first books, The Salzburg Tales and Seven Poor Men of Sydney, were published in 1934 to positive reviews in England and the United States. Her fourth work, The Man Who Loved Children, has been hailed as a ‘masterpiece’ by Jonathan Franzen, among others. In total, Stead wrote almost twenty novels and short-story collections. Stead returned to Australia in 1969 after forty years abroad for a fellowship at the Australian National University. She resettled permanently in Australia in 1974 and was the first recipient of the Patrick White Award that year. Christina Stead died in Sydney in 1983, aged eighty. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential Australian authors of the twentieth century.
‘This neat little volume will appeal to readers who enjoy historical fiction with a good dose of satire. Classic fiction from an
award-winning Australian author.’ BookMooch
‘How to describe it? It’s like a meteorite from Krypton landed on Ozlit’s bindi-eye-riddled lawn, greenly glowing. Or perhaps a mosaic of imagined intimacies...Stead is a recording angel of the threadbare European middle class of the postwar years.’ Saturday Paper
‘In this highly confined setting, Stead creates a busy mini-Europe of petty and poignant crises, or perhaps a molehill of The Magic Mountain. This is an excellent place for the Stead novice to begin enjoying her artistry.’ STARRED REVIEW, Kirkus Reviews
‘One of Australia’s greatest novelists puts together...a crew as sad, funny and perverse as any ever gathered.’ Time
After the Second World War, bizarre characters from across the ruined continent have gathered at the ‘fourth-rate’ Hotel Swiss-Touring by Lake Geneva. Some are residents, while ot...
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About the author
Author Christina Stead was born in Rockdale, New South Wales, Australia on July 17, 1902. She left Australia in 1928 and spent time in Europe, England, and the United States before permanently returning in 1974. She wrote fifteen novels and numerous volumes of short stories. She is best known for her novel, The Man Who Loved Children, which was based on her childhood. Her novels were unpublished in Australia until 1965 and she was denied the Britannica-Australia award in 1967 on the grounds that she was no longer considered an Australian. In 1974, she won the Patrick White award. While living in the United States during the 1940s, she worked as a Hollywood scriptwriter and contributed to Madame Curie and They Were Expendable. She died on March 31, 1983.
Lisa Gorton is an Australian poet, essayist and fiction writer. She studied literature at the University of Melbourne and later studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar receiving her Masters in Renaissance Literature and her Doctorate on John Donne. She worked as a visiting tutor at Rhodes University, South Africa during her studies. After returning to Australia, she released her first poetry collection Press Release (2007). It received the 2008 Victorian Premier's Literary award for poetry and the inaugural Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. Hotel Hyperion (2013) was her second poetry collection and received the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal. Her first children's novel was Cloudland (2008). Her next novel The Life of Houses was published in 2015 and with it, became a joint winner of the 2016 Prime Ministers Award for fiction.
Author Christina Stead was born in Rockdale, New South Wales, Australia on July 17, 1902. She left Australia in 1928 and spent time in Europe, England, and the United States before permanently returning in 1974. She wrote fifteen novels and numerous volumes of short stories. She is best known for...
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