by Paul Bailey
First published 2015
Dinu Grigorescu steps off the train in Paris in May 1927. The skinny nineteen-year-old carries literary dreams and his father's money, sent from Bucharest to taste bohemian life. Seven years have passed since his mother Elena died, and the grief still follows him. His cousin Eduard pushes him toward Parisian pleasures, but Dinu finds himself drawn to the Bains du Ballon d'Alsace. This notorious bathhouse serves men seeking unconventional companionship. There he meets Razvan, another Romanian exile who calls himself a prince's boy. Razvan speaks of Proust and artists, becoming Dinu's guide to both literature and desire. Forty years later, writing from London after Europe's wars have ravaged his homeland, Dinu sets down this memoir of his brief Parisian awakening. That sunlit encounter in the bathhouse sparked a love that would survive separation, loss, and decades of silence.
Genres: romance, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, adult-fiction, biographical-fiction, gay-fiction
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, lyrical
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Bucharest, London, Paris
Period: 1927, 1960s
152 pages · Paperback · Bloomsbury