A Midsummer Party

A party turns into a palace of storytelling. Around the unnamed artist-narrator, characters – comic, self-absorbed, ambitious, lost – approach and depart. Snapshots of vanished Australia and enchanted Italy depict the poignancy of memory, its inevitable twinning with self-confabulation and self-departure. Comic, compassionate, brilliantly composed, a travelling companion for the imagination. – Paul Carter

An Australian journalist attends a party in Rome, the Eternal City. The result is at once a celebration and a distillation of what travel can be and still is: an intelligent, hilarious, and sometimes prickly conversation between cultures.

With finesse, Antoni Jach affectionately lampoons everything from the publishing world and the writing life to relationships, his beloved hometown Melbourne, and the often-pompous nature of national pride.

Erudite and amusing, A Midsummer Party is both a revelation, a romp and a penetrating reflection on the intersection of art and our own human foibles.

Antoni Jach reveals travel as a vehicle for the psyche, a sort of time travel machine. I loved this book, the sense of philosophy that underpins everything it has to say. In the future I will travel with a greater sense of the magical. – Virginia Peters

Beneath this story, as people come and go, talking of Michelangelo and other topics, lies a tale of subtle philosophical depth. A Midsummer Party brings to mind the films of Fellini or Sorrentino. It is delightful, beguiling, entertaining, and thought-provoking. – Paul Morgan