The novel opens in Amsterdam at the turn of the last century. It moves to New York at the time of the 1907 financial crisis and proceeds onboard a luxury liner headed for Cape Town.
It is about a young manβPiet Barolβwith an instinctive appreciation for pleasure and a gift for finding it. Pietβs father is an austere administrator at Hollandβs oldest university. His mother, a singing teacher, has diedβbut not before giving him a thorough grounding in the arts of charm.
Piet applies for a job as tutor to the troubled son of Europeβs leading hotelier: a child who refuses to leave his familyβs mansion on Amsterdamβs grandest canal. As the young man enters this glittering world, he learns its secretsβand soon, quietly, steadily, finds his life transformed as he in turn transforms the lives of those around him.
History of a Pleasure Seeker is a brilliantly written portrait of the senses, a novel about pleasure and those who are in search of it; those who embrace it, luxuriate in it, need it; and those who deprive themselves of it as they do those they love. It is a book that will beguile and transport youβto another world, another time, another state of being.
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