Invitation To The Dance

Feb 25, 2026 8:05 AM

Author:Hilary Spurling

A unique reference book for all fans of Anthony Powell's 12-volume novel, A Dance to the Music of Time, which has become a literary landmark of twentieth-century writing. More than a simple glossary, Invitation to the Dance contains extensive Character, Book, Painting and Place indices, creating a magnificent database of Powell's imagination and England's cultural landscape. This is a masterpiece of 'extreme ingenuity' detailing over four hundred characters and one million words of Powell's lively fifty-year dance of fiction and fact. 'Hilary Spurling's exhaustive analysis of the novel's characters supplies a master-key for the reader of Anthony Powell.

Reviews

Hilary Spurling's exhaustive analysis of the novel's characters supplies a master-key for the reader

—— Anthony Powell

'Edric is a terrific storyteller but he also provides a pretty accurate picture of modern-day crime and the way that it affects so many people. Impressive stuff'

—— Observer

'Edric keeps his readers - and Rivers - dangling on a tangled string'

—— Scotsman

'Edric shows his mastery over the complexities of a crime thriller ... Classic whodunit territory and lovers of the genre will find Siren Song right up their street'

—— Yorkshire Evening Post

Intense, elegant, despairing prose...deeply affecting

—— Guardian

A transcendentally harmonious and compassionate work

—— Times Literary Supplement

A surprisingly tender book... Amid the terror a classic story about love sneaks through: love lost, love imagined, love morphed into madness

—— New York Times Book Review

Beautifully written... It puts a human face on the suffering inflicted by the Taliban... Disturbing and mesmerizing, The Swallows of Kabul will stay with you long after you've finished it

—— San Francisco Chronicle

Riveting... Spare, taut, and pristinely clear prose... An uncanny knack for making moral tension palpable... Extraordinarily moving

—— Philadelphia Inquirer

A novel very much in the tradition of Albert Camus, not only in its humanism and concern with the consequences of individual choices but also in its determination to bear witness to the absurdities of daily life... [A] chilling portrait of fundamentalism run amok and its fallout on ordinary people

—— New York Times

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