The Princess of 72nd Street

‘A cult classic … A high and a comedown at once – a paroxysm of sex and booze and, above all, colour … wryly funny … it is also devastating’ The New Yorker

An unforgettable portrait of a smart, sensitive, yet deeply troubled young woman fighting to live on her own terms

‘I don’t need LSD for things to look pretty.’

Ellen is an artist living alone on New York in the 1970s. She is beset by irritating ex-boyfriends, paint pigment choices, and, occasionally, by ‘radiances’ – episodes of joyous, reckless unreality during which she becomes Princess Esmerelda, a brightly-dressed star ruling over her kingdom of West 72nd Street. Yet there are those around her, particularly the men in her life, who are threatened by this incarnation, and wish to curtail the giddy freedom it brings her. A rhapsodic work of exuberant invention and deadpan humour, The Princess of 72nd Street sees female liberation and mental health through new eyes.

With an Introduction by Melissa Broder

‘One of literature’s hidden gems … demands a place on your bookshelf right next to Plath and Ditlevsen’ Sarah Rose Etter