Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell
Temporary Kings is a novel by Anthony Powell, the penultimate in his twelve-volume novel, A Dance to the Music of Time. It was published in 1973 by Heinemann and remains in print as does the rest of the sequence. It takes place at a fictional 1958 symposium in Venice.
Temporary Kings has been characterized as a novel in the post-war consensus of literary compromise.[1] It also demonstrates Powell's evocation of art at all levels, most notably an (imaginary) Venetian ceiling painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo[2]
Temporary Kings received the W. H. Smith Prize in 1974.[3]
It is dedicated to Roland Gant, Powell's editor, who Powell called "one in a million."[4][5]