The Idiot Princess of the Last Dynasty (The Knopf Poetry Series, Number 14)

The Idiot Princess of the Last Dynasty is a sequence of dramatic, apocryphal monologues spoken by an American Irishman who had come to France in the Great War and stayed on, a flamboyantly homosexual abortionist and torrential reconteur with a sweeping knowledge of the seamier regions of history, psychology and culture. Holding court in a Parisian café from September 1939 through June 1940 and the fall of France, Mahoney captivates strangers and habitués alike.