Dickens and Prince

Get in the xigxag app
This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.
Pre-order Buy Now £{{ price }}
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

In this joyous and illuminating book, the million-copy bestselling author brings together an unlikely pairing to explore the story of their creative genius

What could possibly connect Prince, the great twentieth century singer songwriter, and Charles Dickens, the great writer of classics usually stuffed into the hands of adolescents too early? What could these two geniuses, one born in 1812 in England, and the other in 1950s Minneapolis, have in common?

For Nick Hornby, Dickens and Prince are two artists that compare to no others. At the young age of 24, they both had their breakthroughs, Prince with '1999' and Dickens with The Pickwick Papers. At 26, Prince released 'Purple Rain' and Dickens' Oliver Twist was published, and, by 30, both artists were huge stars.

No one else had such a relentless work ethic and produced such a staggeringly original and enormous body of work. Where did their magic come from? How did they use it? And, in the end, did it kill them?

Tracing their lives, from the early years to their relationships with women, their finances to their inability to stop working, Dickens and Prince is a brilliantly surprising and joyous uncovering of the essence of a very particular and unique type of genius.

© Nick Hornby 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • Well, here’s something you didn’t expect – a joint biography of Charles Dickens and the pocket-sized popster Prince. And why not? The Fever Pitch chappie explores the nature of genius and what unites the inimitable Boz and the Imp of the Perverse

    The Times, Best Books for Autumn

  • I love this. It’s smart and funny and elegantly persuasive

    Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of Becoming Dickens

  • From rocky beginnings to too-early endings, Hornby traces the lives of two very different artists and shows they have more in common than we might think. Dickens & Prince is a playful, illuminating book

    The i, 40 best books to read this Autumn

More from the same

Author

Narrator

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.