House Of All Nations
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - minor damage; clipped. Page Condition: Good. Markings: Name on fep. Usual shelf-wear.
Set in the feverish world of 1930s Paris banking, House of All Nations is a sprawling, electrifying novel that chronicles the rise and imminent fall of the Banque Mercure, a private bank run by the charismatic and morally bankrupt Jules Bertillon. Through a vast cast of financiers, schemers, aristocrats, and desperate clients, Christina Stead constructs a razor-sharp portrait of capitalism at its most seductive and most predatory — a world where money is the only language and greed its only grammar. Stead's ambition in this novel is staggering: with over one hundred characters and a structure that reads like a mosaic of human cupidity, she argues that the financial system is not merely an economic institution but a mirror of the human soul in its most corrupt form. Her prose crackles with wit, irony, and a reporter's unflinching eye for detail, placing House of All Nations alongside the great satirical novels of the twentieth century. For readers who dare to look, the question Stead leaves hanging is both timeless and unsettling — who, in the end, is truly being robbed?
Author: Christina Stead
Format: Hardback
Published: 1974, Angus and Robertson
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - minor damage; clipped. Page Condition: Good. Markings: Name on fep. Usual shelf-wear.
Set in the feverish world of 1930s Paris banking, House of All Nations is a sprawling, electrifying novel that chronicles the rise and imminent fall of the Banque Mercure, a private bank run by the charismatic and morally bankrupt Jules Bertillon. Through a vast cast of financiers, schemers, aristocrats, and desperate clients, Christina Stead constructs a razor-sharp portrait of capitalism at its most seductive and most predatory — a world where money is the only language and greed its only grammar. Stead's ambition in this novel is staggering: with over one hundred characters and a structure that reads like a mosaic of human cupidity, she argues that the financial system is not merely an economic institution but a mirror of the human soul in its most corrupt form. Her prose crackles with wit, irony, and a reporter's unflinching eye for detail, placing House of All Nations alongside the great satirical novels of the twentieth century. For readers who dare to look, the question Stead leaves hanging is both timeless and unsettling — who, in the end, is truly being robbed?