The Days of the King by Filip Florian [Read This Next]

This week’s Read This Next title is Filip Florian’s The Days of the King, translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth and coming out on August 16th from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Florian’s first translated title—Little Fingers—got a lot of great attention (Michael Orthofer gave it a solid B and here’s a review from fellow BTBA judge Annie Janush), and we’re excited to be able to preview his new novel.

Contemporary Romanian Writers has a nice page on Florian and his work, and includes this entertaining self-portrait:

These days, I swear I wouldn’t know what to say about myself. At forty, it has become clear to me that I’m never going to be a football player, I’m beginning to lose hope that I’ll ever have long hair, I wake up increasingly early in the morning, I eat unbelievably few cherries (which I once cherished), I smoke unbelievably many cigarettes (which I once despised), truth seems to me quite questionable and the weather forecasts leave me cold. Fortunately, though not as strongly as I used to, I still believe that one day I’m going to catch a twenty-kilo sheatfish.

You can also hear Florian’s presentation on the “War at the Novel” panel at PEN World Voices 2009 by clicking here.

Anyway, here’s the official HMH jacket copy for The Days of the King:

Joseph Strauss (a dentist and bachelor, client of the Eleven Titties brothel and of Der Große Bär beer cellar) leaves Prussia in the spring of 1866 and follows a captain of dragoons to Bucharest, where the officer is to ascend the throne as prince of the United Principalities of Romania. War is imminent in central Europe, but the company of a special tomcat, a guardian angel of sorts, helps him to overcome all dangers.

In Bucharest, Joseph will meet and fall in love with an attractive nanny, while the prince distances himself from the dentist, seeking to erase all stains from his past, particularly his involvement with a beautiful blind prostitute. But unbeknownst to him, she has given birth to a baby boy with a suspiciously aristocratic nose . . .

Nations are invented and dissolved overnight, kingdoms are for sale, Bucharest grows from a muddy pigsty into an elegant capital city, and love turns everything upside down in The Days of the King.

Check out the extended preview by clicking here. And later this week we’ll have an interview, full length review, etc.