The Prince's Boy

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 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 twentiethcentury
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
"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" - Herald
"If Fred Astaire had been a novelist he’d have been Paul Bailey. This beautiful, moving
novel is a piece of dazzling footwork and reveals Bailey once more as one of the wittiest,
most panacheful and most graceful writers we have. I love this beautiful book" - Ali
Smith on Chapman's Odyssey

About the Author

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.