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by Paul Bailey
In May 1927, nineteen-year-old Dinu Grigorescu, a skinny boy with literary ambitions, is newly arrived in Paris. He has been sent from Bucharest, the city of his childhood, by his wealthy father to embark upon a bohemian adventure and relish the unique pleasures of Parisian life.
An innocent in a new city, still grieving the sudden loss of his beloved mother Elena seven years earlier, Dinu is encouraged to enjoy la vie de Bohème by his distant cousin, Eduard. But tentatively, secretly, Dinu is drawn to the Bains du Ballon d'Alsace, a notorious establishment rumored to offer the men of Paris, married or otherwise, who enjoy something different, everything they crave. It is here that he meets Razvan, a fellow Romanian, the adopted child of a man of refinement - a prince's boy - whose stories of Proust and other artists entrance Dinu, and who will become the young man's teacher in the ways of the world.
At a distance of forty years and written in London, his refuge from the horrors of Europe's early-twentieth-century history, Dinu's memoir of his brief spell in Paris is one of exploration and rediscovery. The love that blossomed that sunlit day in such inauspicious and unromantic surroundings would transcend lust, separation, despair, and even death to endure a lifetime. This is a work of extraordinary sensual delicacy, an exquisite novel from one of our most celebrated writers.
"The basic elements of the story line [are familiar]... but the rich characters and the supple prose make it far more than the sum of its parts." - Publishers Weekly
"A love story coexists uneasily with the rise of fascism." - Kirkus
"Recalling the breathless intensity of Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain and Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name, Bailey's accomplished new novel, set against the backdrop of prewar Europe, will beguile most fiction readers." - Library Journal
This information about The Prince's Boy was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Paul Bailey is an award-winning writer whose novels include At the Jerusalem, which won a Somerset Maugham Award and an Arts Council Writers' Award; Peter Smart's Confessions and Gabriel's Lament, both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Sugar Cane, a sequel to Gabriel's Lament; Kitty and Virgil, and, most recently, Uncle Rudolf. He is the recipient of the E. M. Forster Award and the George Orwell Memorial Award, and has also written and presented features for radio. Paul Bailey lives in London.
Pony Confidential
by Christina Lynch
In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
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