The Black Prince

A story about being in love, «The Black Prince» is also a remarkable intellectual thriller with a superbly involved plot, and a meditation on the nature of art and love and the deity who rules over both. Bradley Pearson, narrator and hero, is an elderly writer with a «block». Encompassed by predatory friends and relations — his ex-wife, her delinquent brother and a younger, deplorably successful writer, Arnold Baffin, together with Baffin’s restless wife and youthful daughter — Bradley attempts escape. His failure and its aftermath lead to a violent climax; and to a coda which casts a shifting perspective on all that has gone before.