Prodigies

by Francis King

"Three women - daughter, mother, aunt - abandon their pampered, privileged lives in The Hague of the 1860s, to set off on an epic journey to the heart of Africa. Since the daughter, Alexine, has inherited a vast fortune from her mysterious tycoon father, the women take with them the family butler and nurse and each her own personal maid. In Cairo they recruit a staff of more than a hundred." "The male explorers of the day at first mock so audacious a trespass into what has previously been an almost exclusively male preserve. Then they begin to accord the trio a grudging admiration for their initiative, courage and endurance. Had she been born into a different class, the mother might have made a successful career as a concert pianist. The aunt, unmarried, once had an unhappy love-affair with Tsar Alexander II." "The travellers go through a series of now exhilarating, now bizarre and now terrifying adventures, as indomitably they push on with what becomes an exploration not merely of uncharted Africa but of their own innermost selves. Eventually tragedy engulfs each of them in turn."--BOOK JACKET.

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Francis Henry King, CBE, was a British novelist, poet and short story writer.

He was born in Adelboden, Switzerland, brought up in India and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land. After completing his degree in 1949 he worked for the British Council; he was posted around Europe, and then in Kyoto. He resigned to write full time in 1964.

He was a past winner of the W. Somerset Maugham Prize for his novel The Dividing Stream (1951) and also won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize. A President Emeritus of International PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was appointed an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 1979 and a Commander of the Order (CBE) in 1985.

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last of King's 32 novels for me to read; his 29th from 2001.

This is unique amongst King's works in that it is a historical fiction, based on the real life of one Alexine Tinne, who was once the richest woman in The Netherlands in the mid 1800s. As such, he is somewhat constrained by the facts of her story, although they are so fantastical that he is able to bring his usual astute flair to the proceedings - and his version of her death is at odds with the facts.

It's also his longest book, and took me the longest to read, both because of such and because of some longueurs in the middle sections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexine...

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nederlandse titel: Wonderen