The Prince

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This National Book Award nominee takes us to a not-so-fictional place, Tinieblas, where intrigue, violence, and military coups occur as often as fruits fall from the trees. Kiki, the son of a twice-ex-president, has inherited his father's thirst for power and the presidency. But to become president of Tinieblas takes a Machiavellian intelligence, for one must outwit not only political foes but the strong American interests. An insightful, furious, and funny depiction of twentieth-century Latin America, The Prince is an essential novel for readers of history and magical realism alike. Review"The writing is tender, careful and smart — Koster's attention to tone extends even to some awkward English dialogue that mirrors natural-sounding Spanish — and the satire hits its mark…In these stories, Koster's touch for the absurd and ear for pith come out…It's unclear at what point you start to feel the depth behind Koster's acrobatic balance of elegant narration, disgusting violence and acerbic satire. It's the subtlety that takes the book beyond caricature and into complexity." —Full Stop "The Prince got to me. I liked its swaggering adventuresomeness, its magnificent vanity, its almost comic sense of cruelty." --Christopher Lehmann–Haupt, The New York Times "The most extraordinary novel." --Life "Pynchon, Barth, Vonnegut, and Koster may be an acquired taste, but once the palate is trained, other American novelists can seem bland and pallid." --Los Angeles Times "Koster's creation of Tinieblas is a remarkable achievement." --The New York Times Book Review"The value of a well-chosen reprint should go beyond merely reminding us of a good book that we might have forgotten—-it should reengage us with a former state of the world and that world’s reflection in literature…It may be odd to call extreme violence in literary fiction “refreshing,” but reading The Prince reminds us of its notable absence in much of today’s work." --The Daily BeastAbout the AuthorR. M. Koster is a journalist who has been published in the New Republic, Harper's, Quest, and Connoisseur, among others.