The Prince's Boy : A Novel

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 novel's length--a mere 160 pages in hardcover--serves as a credit to Bailey's ability to pack an astounding amount of information and emotion into very few words; The Prince's Boy covers more than 40 years and three countries, and contains a lifetime of Dinu's love. Though large swaths of information are necessarily glossed over, no detail ever feels forgotten, no trembling hand or rapid heartbeat untold…A short, powerful story of one man's unexpected summer in 1927 Paris and how it shaped his life.” —Shelf Awareness

“Bailey shows the light touch of an Armistead Maupin.” —Kirkus

“Bailey (At the Jerusalem) does more with less in this short, but moving, coming-of-age novel.” —Publishers Weekly

“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