Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

Thank you to my beautiful family, who were so patient despite the many vacations ruined by drafts and deadlines; thank you to my late father, Choung Tai Chee, who brought me up to love Italian opera and Russian novels, and thank you to my mother, whose stories of her childhood and her family informed the creation of Lilliet.

Thank you to my agent, Jin Auh, who I cannot thank enough, and everyone at the Wylie Agency. Jin loved this novel from the first few pages I sent a very long time ago and is the only person who’s read this novel anywhere near as often as I have. I am so grateful for her enduring enthusiasm and her wisdom and hard work.

Thank you to everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt but especially to my editors: Webster Younce, who acquired it; Andrea Schulz, for her enthusiasm and patience despite receiving me as an orphan, and her determination to bring this novel out; and to Naomi Gibbs, who has seen it in so many forms and whose thoughtful work on its intricacies made this final version possible. I’m very grateful to them all. Thank you to Marian Ryan and David Hough, my copyeditors, on the first and second rounds, respectively — the novel is buttoned up and ready for the ball because of you.

I am very grateful for the support this novel received from fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Whiting Foundation; the Massachusetts Cultural Council; the MacDowell Colony; Ledig House; the Civitella Ranieri Foundation; the Hermitage in Englewood, Florida; and the University of Leipzig. I am also indebted to many museums and libraries: the University of Rochester Library and Special Collections; Amherst College’s Frost Library and Special Collections; the Performing Arts Library of New York at Lincoln Center; the special collections of the New York Public Library; the British Library; the Butler Library at Columbia; the Museum of Fashion in Paris; the Museum of the Decorative Arts; the Musée Nissim de Camondo; the Musée Carnavalet; the Musée Cognacq-Jay; the museum of the Empress Eugénie at Compiègne; the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This novel owes a special debt to the Center for Fiction Library, where much of it was written — thank you especially to Noreen Tomassi, Kristin Henley, Christopher Messer, and Matt Nelson.

I am very grateful to the many friends who helped with this novel. Thank you to Shauna Seliy, Kirsten Bakis, Patrick Nolan, Stan Parish, Steve Chasey, Melanie Fallon, Katie Horowitz, Rhonda Pressley Veit, Patrick Merla, Maud Newton, Catherine Chung, and Anna Keesey — you all provided much needed readings, encouragement, and insights. Thank you to Lauren Cerand for your faith in me and this novel. Thank you to Madalyn Aslan, who introduced me to the Falcon soprano legends. Thank you to Scott Miller for telling me about the superstitions of seamstresses. Thank you to Kera Bolonik, Meredith Clair, and Theo Bolonik, my Camp Knotty Pines family. Thank you to Chris Offutt, Roxana Robinson, Honor Moore, Liz Harris, and Anne Greene, my Wesleyan Writers Conference cofaculty who were such good listeners to this novel over the years, for their feedback and enthusiasm. A special thank-you to Edmund White, who helped me understand courtesans best of all. Thank you to Jami Attenberg, who made a pact with me to finish this novel — it helped. Thank you to Josef Asteinza for assistance with my research in Paris. Thank you to Gerard Koskovich for your many insights and historical research assistance. Thank you to Paula Lee for your general fact-check regarding France in the nineteenth century. Thank you to my Amherst College family: Daniel Hall, Peng Yew Chin, Judy Frank, Catherine Newman, Cathy Ciepiela, Marisa Parham, John Drabinski, John Hennessy, Gabe and Nick Hennessy-Murray, John Urschel, Sydne Didier, Ron Rosbottom. Special thanks to Anston Bosman for the night we dressed up in sheets and played at being Hamlet — this inspired the scene at Nohant. Thank you to Barry O’Connell for the loan of his writing carrel in Frost Library while I was the Visiting Writer at Amherst — it was a glorious refuge. Thank you to Sabina Murray for the long talks about writing historical fiction and research. Thank you to the Amherst coffee crew — Mukunda Feldman; his wife, Kylie Feldman; Jay Venezia; Andrew Sanni; Jeremy Browne; Marisa Eva; Martin O’Malley; Claire Kavanagh; and Nick Brown — you all kept me good company. In Paris, special thanks are due to Matthew Hicks, my consummate guide to Paris, and Pascal Touin-Stratigeas, his husband, who together told me of the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes and inspired the scene set there. In Detroit, thank you to Leon Johnson and Megan McConnell, Marlowe and Leander Johnson, and the Salt and Cedar Press crew. In Leipzig, thank you to Jennifer Porto, Andrew Curry, Avery Jennings, and Timothy Fallon, who told me about the heldentenor. In Berlin, thank you to Bill Martin, Libby Bunn Neuemann, Peer Neuemann, and Daniel Schreiber.

And finally, thank you to my readers, especially those of you who checked in over the years, waiting for this book. I’m grateful to you all.

ALEXANDER CHEE won a Whiting Award for his first novel, Edinburgh , and is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House, and Civitella Ranieri. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate , and on NPR, among others, and he is a contributing editor at the New Republic . He lives in New York City.