Temporary Kings

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. It also demonstrates Powell's evocation of art at all levels, most notably an (imaginary) Venetian ceiling painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Temporary Kings received the W. H. Smith Prize in 1974. It is dedicated to Roland Gant, Powell's editor, who Powell called "one in a million."