Panos Karnezis 
Birthday Party 

Knopf Canada is proud to welcome an internationally acclaimed, award-winning writer with his brilliant novel that tells the story of one of worlds richest and most infamous tycoons.As dawn breaks on a small island late in the summer of 1975, a tycoon wakes up to oversee the final preparations for his daughters birthday party. Finding out that she is pregnant by someone he does not approve of, he tries to persuade her to end the pregnancy: his private doctor and oldest friend is standing by to perform the procedure. Among the other guests is the tycoons ambitious biographer. The story intersperses the riveting events that unfold during the day of the party with the tycoons rise to wealth and fame, from childhood in Asia Minor to old age, via Buenos Aires, New York, London and Paris, and the attempts of his young biographer to bring his subjects true personality to light.The Birthday Party is at once fascinating, revealing and hilarious a gripping novel that comments upon the art of biography and the invention of a human life.From the Hardcover edition.