The Prince's Boy
Published on 27. March 2014
Book
Hardback
160 pages
978-1-4088-5189-0 (ISBN)
Description
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 Boheme by his distant cousin, Eduard. But tentatively, secretly, Dinu is drawn to the Bains du Ballon d'Alsace, a notorious establishment rumoured 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.
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 Boheme by his distant cousin, Eduard. But tentatively, secretly, Dinu is drawn to the Bains du Ballon d'Alsace, a notorious establishment rumoured 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.
Reviews / Votes
A writer whose tone is like a long, cool drink on a sweaty day ... Rich in character studies, yet so delicately written one barely registers at first its many layers and nuances, The Prince's Boy is a winterly evocation of a grief and love that will not wither ... Tender and profoundly touching, this is a novel whose almost dry manner could lure the reader into thinking the author has no designs on you. By its end, however, his fingers have squeezed your heart * <b><i>Herald</b></i> * What sets it apart is Bailey's elegant, elegiac prose and his moving, thought-provoking reflections on art and mortality * <b><i>Mail on Sunday</i></b> * A thoroughly satisfying book ... Paul Bailey, twice shortlisted for the Booker prize, has the same ability as Graham Greene to craft remarkable emotion and beauty from words than on the face of it are prosaic. There is no over-writing here, just superb, utterly readable prose * <b><i>Independent on Sunday</b></i> * An elegant meditation on love, sex and Marcel Proust ... Moving seamlessly between memoirs and dreams, The Prince's Boy sparkles with witty references to A la recherche du temps perdu * <b><i>Sunday Telegraph</b></i> * Bailey writes exquisitely about everything he touches upon, from falling in love to fascism ... the elegant narrative holds an intensity that crackles to the very end * <b><i>Sunday Times</i></b> * Bailey writes with lyrical beauty; this novel is charming and poignant * <b><i>The Times</i></b> * Bailey's precise, polished and often exquisite writing eloquently gestures towards the love between Dinu and Razvan * <b><i>Times Literary Supplement</b></i> * Bailey has mastered the craft of telling a large story through small but piquant details and knowing where the reader can be left to fill in the spaces. His nimble-footed storytelling moves lightly over great distances of time and space to produce something like a Victorian novel in miniature * <b><i>Guardian</i></b> * Bailey writes with lyrical beauty ... This novel is a charming, poignant little wisp of a thing * <b><i>The Times</i></b> * Spare and taut * <b><i>Daily Telegraph</i></b> * He has the same ability as Graham Greene to craft remarkable emotion and beauty from words that on the face of it are prosaic * <b><i>Independent on Sunday</i></b> * I'm home for my summer holidays this year with the pile of new books that I've been waiting to read for months, including Paul Bailey's The Prince's Boy ... Four writers I love, four brand new works, a surfeit of elegance and intelligence. Could summer get any better? * <b>Ali Smith, <i>Observer</i> Summer Reading</b> * It's difficult to sum up what a beautiful thing, what a strong, gentle and discerning book, what a lit firework, what a piece of elegance and understanding and what a good story Paul Bailey's The Prince's Boy is ... I'll be telling people to read it for the rest of my life * <b>Ali Smith, <i>New Statesman</i> Books of the Year</b> *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
Weight
295 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-5189-0 (9781408851890)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Paul Bailey
The Prince's Boy
E-Book
03/2014
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€8.49
Available for download
Person
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 Booker Prize for Fiction; Sugar Cane, a sequel to Gabriel's Lament, Kitty and Virgil, Uncle Rudolf and most recently Chapman's Odyssey. 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.