The Dinner Party
by Howard Fast
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Howard Fast's 1987 New York Times bestseller, a tight political drama that remains just as relevant today as when it was first writtenFast's 1987 novel The Dinner Party confronts issues including American intervention in Latin America and the AIDS epidemic. Often compared to a play, The Dinner Party takes place during a single day, culminating in a party hosted by Richard Cromwell, a US Senator whose wealthy entrepreneur father-in-law is building a controversial highway across Central show more America, though powerful government interests want the highway stopped stopped. International politics become deeply personal in this novel, and unfailingly serve as a commentary on contemporary politics.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author's estate. show lessTags
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5039. The Dinner Party, by Howard Fast (read 1 Jul 2013) This is a slim political novel written in Reagan's time, with a fake Secretary of State and a fake Senator. The Senator has good instincts but poor morals and the entire book deals with one day in the life of the Senator when he has his wife's jarringly annoying parents-in-law and the Secretary of State at a dinner party, and during which he finds his homosexual son has AIDS. There is a lot of gloomy unpleasant talk and the whole story is steeped in pessimism a la Fast. I did not believe my time spent reading the book was well spent, especially since the novel is 25 years old and has not aged well.
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Novels Published in 1987
81 works; 19 members
Best Noir Fiction
160 works; 14 members
Author Information
183+ Works 8,242 Members
Howard Fast was born on November 11, 1914 in Manhattan. At the age of 17, he sold his first story to Amazing Stories magazine. The next year he sold his first novel, Two Villages, to the Dial Press for a $100 advance. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 80 books, including Conceived in Liberty, The Unvanquished, Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom show more Road, April Morning, The Immigrants, Second Generation, The Establishment, The Legacy, and Greenwich. He won the Stalin International Peace Prize in 1953. A member of the Communist party, he served three months in a federal prison in 1950 for refusing to testify about his political activity. Blacklisted as a result, he founded his own publishing house, Blue Heron Press, which released his novel Spartacus in 1951. In 1957, he wrote a book about his political experiences entitled The Naked God. He also wrote a series of detective stories under the name E. V. Cunningham. He died on March 12, 2003 at the age of 88. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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