The Days of the King

by Filip Florian

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547549026
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	229
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

FILIP FLORIAN is the author of Little Fingers which was named Best Debut Novel from the Romanian Writers' Union. He has also worked as a journalist and reporter for Radio Free Europe. 

Read an Excerpt

1
Farwell

The farewell evening in Berlin concluded just as it ought to have concluded: with the scrawny body
 of the dentist sprawled across the bed, his head buried in that moist, gigantic breast whose pair had
long ago been sliced offby the saber of a drunken hussar. Previously, he had drained six mugs of
beer, bought a drink for anyone who entered the tavern, clinked glasses, hugged friends and strangers
 (what a hubbub!), and won one last round of whist to the cheers of the kibitzers, mainly because his
fellow card players had connived to make him emerge triumphant, not cheating in broad daylight but
by the light of the candles on the tables and shelves. He departed from Der Große Bär after nightfall,
letting them think that he would quickly return from the latrine and order another round for one and
all; in any case, he left behind his coat on the back of his chair, a scuffed overcoat, rather short in the
sleeves, which had not found a place in his luggage for Bukarest, but which eased his exit from the
scene. Later, at the brothel, they welcomed him with whoops and tears, in the way whores do when
they take an occasion to heart. The establishment did not shut up shop in his honor, it is true, but the
girls were able to bid their farewells one by one, plundering Eleven Titties brothel. It was not until
April 14, when the daffodils were in bloom and his tomcat had wounded his muzzle and paw in one
of the neighborhood cat fights, that he read to his astonishment a short item in a gazette about the
holding of a plebiscite: “Today, the lieutenancy and the ministry have proclaimed, by means of bills
posted on the streets, the candidacy of Prince Karl of Hohenzollern to the throne of Romania. The
event seems to have filled the whole nation with rejoicing.” That evening, as the jovial Karl of
Prussia bantered with the other Karl (now at last a captain) in the foyer of the Berlin Opera House,
addressing him as “Turk”, the dentist felt no inclination for mugs of beer, for chatter and whist at the
bar, or for the eleven titties, two per five lively wenches and the one huge one on the chest of Rosa.
Frequently refilling his glass with schnapps, puffing his pipe and gazing through the open window at
the stars and the eaves of the houses across the way, Herr Strauss regretted not having taken the
young officer seriously. He fell asleep dreaming of beautiful women and impatient crowds waiting at
his door for him to quell their toothaches. A few days later, a courier of the dragoons regiment
handed him a yellowish envelope with a crest and the seal of the House of Hohenzollern-
Sigmaringen. It was raining buckets, but the envelope was dry when it emerged from beneath the
military cape.

Editorial Reviews

Blyth spins out Florian’s second novel in sinuous prose . . . It’s testament to the story’s sharp humor and crisp voice—even those amorous passages narrated by the cat—that the reader lingers in each scene, sharing them with the characters moment-by-moment. ”
-Publishers Weekly

"A genial tale about fate and romance ..."
-Kirkus

"Readers on the lookout for unique European literary voices and historical fiction fans looking for a challenge may be charmed by this poetic yet chaotic novel ...[Florian] revels in the sensual details of Bucharest street life , food, sex, and dentistry..."
-Booklist

From the Publisher

A dentist and a prince—along with a remarkably articulate cat—navigate the complex politics of late-19th-century Romania.

It says something about the complexity of central European statecraft that the latest novel by Florian (Little Fingers, 2009, etc.) has a 10-page appendix explaining the Austro-Prussian War, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and other historical details relevant to the book's setting. But though Bucharest endured plenty of turmoil between 1866 and 1881,this book concentrates on more intimate concerns. Central to the story are Karl, a Prussian lieutenant who's been granted the throne of Romania, and his dentist, Joseph, a free spirit who quickly settles into an ad hoc German community in the new city. Florian writes in a fablelike style, and many of his observations deal with the unstable melting pot of the new world Karl and Joseph enter: Early on the dentist is bemused that he's on "an Austro-Hungarian vessel, with a Czech captain, between the Romanian and Bulgarian banks of the Danube, both buffeted by winds from Istanbul." So unlikely connections become a running theme in the novel, as Joseph falls for and later marries a nanny and Karl consorts with a blind prostitute. Florian's style can be demanding: He writes dense, lengthy paragraphs that sometimes shift in and out of dream states, and dialogue is practically absent. Indeed, the closest the book gets to being conversational are the messages Joseph's cat leaves on the furniture—they're just scratches to mere mortals, but they turn out to be high-styled epistles praising human kindness. Such moments lighten the mood considerably, and would have been more welcome in the closing pages; as Bucharest destabilizes, the story becomes ploddingly descriptive about legislative and diplomatic parrying.

A genial tale about fate and romance that sometimes gets overly tangled in political history.

Kirkus Reviews