Freddy and Fredericka will ascend the English throne only if they reacquire the American colonies and become noble spirits in an ignoble age.

Helprin's latest work, an extraordinarily funny allegory of a most peculiar British royal family, is immensely mocking of contemporary monarchy and yet deeply sympathetic to the individuals caught in its lonely absurdities.

Freddy is the Prince of Wales, Fredericka his troublesome wife. An overeducated, bumbling anachronism, Freddy commits one glorious gaffe after another, for which he is massacred daily in the British press. Golden-haired Fredericka, frivolous and empty headed, is particularly fond of wearing spectacular clothing with revealing necklines. Because of the epic public relations disasters caused by these wayward heirs to the throne, they are sent, in a little-known ancient tradition, on a quest to colonize a strange and barbarous land: America.

In a tour (de force) of the United States, they are parachuted into the gleaming hell of industrial New Jersey and make their way across the country — riding freight trains, washing dishes, stealing art, gliding down the Mississippi, impersonating dentists, fighting forest fires, and becoming ineluctably enmeshed in the madness of a presidential campaign. Amid the collisions of their royal assumptions with their life on the road, they rise to their full potential, gain the dignity and humility required of great monarchs and good people, and learn to love each other.

There is nothing quite like it. Helprin is a lyrical writer whose graceful prose is studded with profound truths and insights. Devoted readers know him for his deeply sad stories that are yet uplifting in their conviction of the goodness and resilience of the human spirit. In what seems like a radical departure of form (as if de Tocqueville had been rewritten by Mark Twain with a deep bow to Harpo Marx), this brilliantly refashioned fairy tale is a magnificently funny farce. But behind the laughter Helprin speaks of leaps of faith and second chances, courage and the primacy of love. He leaves us with the final impression that someone has shouted successfully past the cynicism of our postmodern age in behalf of honor, beauty, nobility, and dreams that come true.

"[Helprin] frequently astounds with the freshness of voice and the oddly soaring majesty of this admittedly silly and inconsequential fable." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"[A] full-out farce and a fable of epic proportions....While Helprin often succumbs to cheap-shot lampooning humor, his prose never flags; there is a regal quality to his writing in anything that he undertakes. Still, the novel is a disappointment." Library Journal

"[T]his intermittently verbose yet irresistibly mischievous fable draws freely on Don Quixote, Mark Twain, Monty Python, and Jerzy Kosinski's Being There, yet is in the end pure Helprin in its narrative agility and celebration of nature's glory and human kindness, courage, and love." Booklist

Freddy is the Prince of Wales, and Fredericka is his beautiful, golden-haired wife. Although he is learned and honorable, Freddy commits one gloriously absurd gaffe after another and is massacred daily in the British Press. Fredericka, though frivolous and empty-headed, and viewed with suspicion by the royal family, can do nothing wrong in the eyes of the people. As part of a time-honored tradition — and because of a public relations fiasco — the couple is sent on a quest to colonize a strange and barbarous land. Parachuting into Hoboken, New Jersey, in the dark of night with new identities and no money, their mission is to reconquer the United States.

In his latest work, the author of A Dove of the East and Other Stories pens an extraordinarily funny allegory of a most peculiar British royal family — a mocking of contemporary monarchy and yet deeply sympathetic to the individuals caught in its lonely absurdities.

"With a pitch-perfect sense of the absurd . . . he has produced a delightful romp of a book."

Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Freddy and Fredericka recalls American journeys of self-discovery by Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac. . . . I promise you, this will be one of the fastest . . . novels you'll ever read."

Los Angeles Times

"A rollicking, heartwarming examination of the state of the nation . . . Working his own magic, Helprin transforms the thinly veiled satire of the monarchy into a quirky love song to the colonies."

People

Educated at Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford, Mark Helprin served in the Israeli Army, Israeli Air Force, and British Merchant Navy. He is the author of A Dove of the East and Other Stories, Refiner's Fire, Ellis Island and Other Stories, Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, Memoir from Antproof Case, and The Pacific and Other Stories.