Master Writer, Masterly Novel

A few words on David Pryce-Jones and ‘The Afternoon Sun,’ newly republished

David Pryce-Jones (photographed by Clarissa Pryce-Jones)

David Pryce-Jones is a writer. Can I be more specific? Yes, but it may take a while. He is a novelist, a historian, a biographer, a foreign correspondent, an essayist, a critic, a memoirist . . .

I must say “poet,” too, although he has published relatively few poems. When he was at Oxford, he was runner-up for the Newdigate Prize, a significant laurel for poetry. It has been won by, among others, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Oscar Wilde, James Fenton, and Andrew Motion.

The student whom David was runner-up to was Jon Stallworthy, who became a professor of English at their university, Oxford.

But W. H. Auden, one of the judges, told David something: He (Auden) had voted for him. As far as I’m concerned, if you won Auden’s vote, you won.

Among David’s ten novels is The Afternoon Sun, originally published in 1986. It has just now been republished. And I will say more about it in due course.

Over the years, I have learned a great deal from David Pryce-Jones. I have learned it through his books and articles, and in person. What subjects has he taught me about?

Well, literature and the arts. History, especially 20th-century history, but the history of other periods, too. The Soviet Union and Communism. Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The Middle East. Etc., etc.

He has written books about Cyril Connolly and Graham Greene. (He is also the editor of a compilation about Evelyn Waugh.) One of his works of history is The Hungarian Revolution. His book about the collapse of the Soviet Union is The War That Never Was. (In America, it was published as “The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire.”)

David was acquainted with the Mitfords, one of whom loved Hitler. That was Unity, of whom we have a biography from David. His book Paris in the Third Reich will likely rivet you, and leave a mark on you. It has inspired poetry and music.

One piece of music, by Lloyd Ultan, was premiered by Pinchas Zukerman and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. There is a Pet Shop Boys song, too. Their “In the Night” was inspired by the Paris book.

David’s major work on the Middle East is The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs. In my presence, a well-known Middle East scholar said to him, “I never really understood the Arab world until I read your book.” Some people have tried to dismiss the book as “Orientalist” and all that. Arabs themselves have asked the author, “Why do you care about us so much, that you should write so honestly about us?”

(David first encountered Arab people as a child, when Hitler’s forces pushed him down into Morocco.)

He wrote about his life—and that of his family—in Fault Lines, which was reviewed by Dominic Green in Commentary. Mr. Green ends his review with this sentence: “It will become a classic.” I would not bet against it.

P-J—alternatively “DPJ”—has written ten novels. Some of them have to do with his family, some of them don’t. The Afternoon Sun has to do with his family. In his preface to the new edition, David writes, “I have generally thought myself lucky, as a novelist, to have forebears whose lives could work upon my imagination.”

The Afternoon Sun is utterly Pryce-Jonesian, in that it is skillful, subtle, and finally overwhelming.

What’s it about? I could answer at length, but maybe a simple sentence will do, here and now: It’s about the rise of a Jewish family in Vienna and what happens to its members when the Nazis take over.

The Afternoon Sun has been republished by Tivoli Books, founded in 2024 by Daniel Akst, another veteran man of letters. According to Tivoli’s website, Mr. Akst founded the company “on the premise that too many good books have been unjustly forgotten, and too much of today’s talent is overlooked by mainstream publishers for commercial, political, and other reasons.”

As I see it, Tivoli Books is a “point of light,” to borrow a phrase from the first President Bush.

Funny that the republisher of The Afternoon Sun should be called “Tivoli.” David Pryce-Jones was born on Tivoligasse—“Tivoli Lane,” roughly—in Meidling, Vienna. This was in 1936, two years before the Anschluss. Much later, the family home became a political conference center (or some such).

I paid a visit to it some years ago, in the company of David. We walked up the grand central staircase. Then David walked into an office, which surprised me a little. No one was there, regardless. He remarked to me, matter-of-factly, “This is the room in which I was born.”

He had a narrow escape, over to France, down through Spain, into Morocco. (Fault Lines will give you the details.) Many, many people were killed in the war and the Holocaust. In all the years since, David has endeavored to remember them.

This man has done a lot of living, squeezing drop after drop out of life, it seems to me. “I will drink life to the lees” (Tennyson). Do you mind if I relate something light, even prurient?

One day, David played tennis with Greta Garbo—who was topless.

Beat that, as Bill Buckley would say.

David went to Eton College and then to Magdalen College, Oxford. At university (I have borrowed a British locution), his tutors were, first, A. J. P. Taylor and, second, Raymond Carr. David married a singular and great woman, who, before she became a Pryce-Jones, was Clarissa Caccia. They have four children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren (with another soon to come). A splendid brood, talented in their individual ways.

I once dedicated a book as follows: “To David Pryce-Jones, an exemplary thinker, writer, and friend.” “Exemplary” is the right word, for he has set an example for me and many others. The hours I have spent with David, in a happy variety of countries, form a crucial part of my education.

A professor of mine once wrote something notable about a professor of his own—a renowned historian under whom he had written his dissertation: “He gave me what I can only call a cast of mind.” David Pryce-Jones has done something similar for me.

I am writing from London, where I have spent a week with David and Clarissa, and my heart overflows with gratitude.