“This
bildrungsroman is as smart as it is seductive . . . Readers will savor
final scenes aboard the gilded ocean-liner Eugenie and welcome the
undercurrent that perhaps Piet’s good fortune isn’t luck at all but a
lesson that pleasure exists for those who seek it.” Booklist
“Highly recommended as an engaging portrait of an individual, a family, and time.” Library Journal, starred
Richard Mason was born in South Africa in 1978 and lives in New York City. His first novel, The Drowning People,
published when he was twenty-one and still a student at Oxford, sold
more than a million copies worldwide and won Italy’s Grinzane Cavour
Prize for Best First Novel. He is also the author of Natural Elements, which was chosen by The Washington Post as
one of the best books of 2009 and longlisted for the International
IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Sunday Times Literary Award. History of a Pleasure Seeker is
his fourth novel. In 1999, with Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Mason started the Kay Mason Foundation (www.kaymasonfoundation.org),
which helps disadvantaged South Africans receive quality education.
Mason received the Inyathelo Merit Award for Philanthropy in 2010.
“This
bildrungsroman is as smart as it is seductive . . . Readers will savor
final scenes aboard the gilded ocean-liner Eugenie and welcome the
undercurrent that perhaps Piet’s good fortune isn’t luck at all but a
lesson that pleasure exists for those who seek it.”
