The Princess of 72nd Street

Praise

“A raggedy genius is finally queened, bringing a fairy-tale ending to this cracked, dark story of the old West Side.”—Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author

“When a novelist tells a good story well, it becomes a good novel. When a novelist uses words as if they were sacred love, what is written becomes poetry. Elaine Kraf is a poet.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A frenetic and glittering manifesto, wherein a woman wrestles—or dances—with the most misunderstood parts of herself . . . a well-deserved reintroduction of what is bound to be a beloved classic for contemporary young women.”—Olivia Gatwood, author of Whoever You Are, Honey

“Kraf writes . . . about the habits of madness without trivializing the grimness and pain.”—The Village Voice

“For a novel that is in many ways about fantasy, there is a bracing wind of keen discernment that sweeps through, from the first pages to the last. It is one of the marvels of this book that Elaine Kraf manages to be so recklessly fantastical and so coolly perceptive at the same time.”—Jen Silverman, author of There’s Going to Be Trouble

“There are astonishingly affecting contrasts of the sordid and sad, the detached and misaligned. The Princess of 72nd Street is a serious, important piece of contemporary fiction.”—Booklist

“An electric portrait of one woman’s blazing unraveling. Kraf is one of literature’s hidden gems—that rare writer who refuses to let us look away from her bright, transcendent suffering. Her work demands a place on your bookshelf right next to Plath and Ditlevsen.”—Sarah Rose Etter, author of Ripe