The Party (Catlett, VA)

The Party

Local pick-up preferred but will ship at the buyer s expenseKingston Books 3 IMG_1106Author Rudolph Von Abele (1963)Publisher Houghton Mifflin Company - Boston The Riverside Press - CambridgeThe Party is the story of a decent and well-meaning but weak man s seduction by the power of evil. It is a novel of high tension for the reader is wholly engrossed in the people and the action. But it is also much more it is a disturbing exposition of the cruelty and pathos of moral paralysis.Steimbaum a colonel in the German Army wounded on the Russian front has been stationed in a small Austrian mountain town where the Marshal an official of the Party has a chateau. Steinbaum has been considering taking part in the conspiracy to assassinate the Leader but though he has ample personal and political reasons for doing so. He has not yet been able to make the commitment. On the one hand his mistress has been incarcerated in a concentration camp on the other he has to witness every day the miseries endured by the Slavic and Jewish prisoners working in the local iron mine.He receives an invitation from the Marshall to attend a reception at his chateau. Fascinated by the opportunity to meet this important man face to face yet at the same time revolted by what he stands for Steinbaum accepts.This is the story of the night that follows a night of events at once grotesque and frightening trivial and illuminating. Choosing as his background of the most reprehensible moments of recent world history Mr. Von Abele has given a powerful and plausible image of the plight of the little man entangled in the machinery of the traditional state.Jacket art by William HofmanHardcover with jacket 418 pages Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 63-8284