The King in the Tree: Three Novellas

From the author of Edwin Mullhouse and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Martin Dressler : three dazzling novellas about the many shapes of love.

“Revenge” is a tour de force about erotic love and betrayal, told through the voice of a woman showing her home to a stranger with a disturbing secret. As the once-happy wife moves from living room to bedroom, she insinuates herself into her guest’s (and the reader’s) mind—and we witness the gradual unfolding of a carefully meditated scheme of revenge.

“An Adventure of Don Juan” and the title novella transform classic fables into immediate, wholly original tales of romance. The first puts the famous lover on a country estate in England, where he attempts to perpetrate a brilliant seduction only to discover something surprising about the human heart. In the mesmerizing “The King in the Tree,” Millhauser explores devotion and denial, casting the tragedy of Tristan and Ysolt as an engrossing tale of a king’s infatuation with his beautiful wife—and the agony of her betrayal with his own nephew.

Full of passion, trysting, and fatal pleasures, these three brilliant novellas are rich with the many gifts of our most persistently imaginative romancer.