The Prince - Softcover

Golshiri, Hushang

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099468395 ISBN 13: 9780099468394

Publisher: Vintage, 2006

Synopsis

The1920s. Iran. In a crumbling house in a provincial town, the last survivor of a deposed dynasty is slowly dying from tuberculosis. The Prince's once magnificent domain has shrunk to his domestic household, where the glories of his ancestors haunt him. Drifting in and out of consciousness, the Prince is tormented by episodes relived of his forbears' callous and whimsical rule. Long-dead relations glare out from photographs gathering dust in the Prince's room, or in his fevered imagination step down from their picture frames to threaten and berate him.

Of these phantoms, the most terrifying is his wife Fakhronissa, who taunts him, as in life, with the vigour and potency of his grandfather and his great-grandfather. In his anguish, as his life unravels, the Prince consoles himself by seducing her servant Fakhri.

About this title

Review:

"There is no denying the power of Golshiri's writing, nor his unfaltering grasp of this slithery, inchoate subject. You don't even need to know a scrap of Persian or Iranian history to glean some sense from the picture he draws....This is one of the most disturbing novels I have read in a long time. It's made all the more unsettling for being sensational only in the skill of its telling." (Rosemary Goring Glasgow Herald)

"'Vivid and original...[Buchan's] admirable translation conveys the nuances and subtleties of the original while his lucid introduction provides the background. Memorable reading'" (The Times)

"'Conjures up a disconcerting, deeply evocative world'" (New Statesman)

"'Stark and hallucinatory'" (Scotland on Sunday)

From the Publisher:

When this novel was first published in Iran in 1969, as Prince Ehtejab, Golshiri was immediately acclaimed as one of the first writers to apply modern literary techniques to depict the demise of the Iranian aristocracy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0099468395
• ISBN 13: 9780099468394
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160