The Prince

Author: Golshiri, Houshang, Buchan, James

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 2 November 2006 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage) in the United Kingdom.

This work was set in 1920s, in 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.