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In the glittering tradition of Edith Wharton, The Emperor´s Children examines life in upper-crust Manhattan, and tells a compelling story of ambition, vanity and tragedy

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With an introduction by Neel Mukherjee.

In Manhattan, just after the century´s turn, three thirty-year-old friends, Danielle, Marina and Julius, are seeking their fortunes. But the arrival of Marina´s young cousin Bootie - fresh from the provinces and keen, too, to make his mark - forces them to confront their own desires and expectations.

The Emperor´s Children by Claire Messud is an American classic: a sweeping portrait of one of the most fascinating cities in the world, and a haunting illustration of how the events of a single day can change everything, for ever.

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In its scope, style and substance, The Emperor´s Children is an attempt to return the novel to its golden age; it is engaged in a conversation with George Eliot, Henry James, Dostoevsky. Its psychological realism is perfect, its characters . . . thrillingly real, alive and utterly convincing in their subtleties of thought and the ticking of their minds.
Messud´s prose is a timely and intensely pleasurable reminder of the possibilities of the English language. To use the word clarity about her style - dense, chaste, luminously intelligent - is to return the word to its origins; this is style as illumination, shining a searching yet sympathetic light on the minds and inner worlds of her characters, and as a radiant mode of moral inquiry.
The Times

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Messud, Claire
Claire Messud was educated at Yale and Cambridge. Her first novel, When the World Was Steady, and her book of novellas, The Hunters , were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award; her second novel, The Last Life , was a Publishers´ Weekly Best Book of the Year; all three books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship and the Straus Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with her husband and children.

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