A Curious Invitation features forty of the greatest festivities to appear in fiction. Some of these parties are depictions of real events, like the Duchess of Richmond's ball on the eve of battle with Napoleon in Thackeray's Vanity Fair, others draw on the author's experience of the society they lived in, such as Lady Metroland's part in Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies; while others come straight from the writer's bizarre imagination, like Douglas Adams' flying party above an unknown planet from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Suzette Field offers you the chance to gatecrash these parties, spanning most of human civilization and seen through the eyes of the world's greatest writers.