The Sun King - by David Ignatius (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius is one of the most highly regarded writers in the capital, an influential journalist and acclaimed novelist with a keen eye for the subtleties of power and politics. In The Sun King, Ignatius has written a love story for our time, a spellbinding portrait of the collision of ambition and sexual desire.

Sandy Galvin is a billionaire with a rare talent for taking risks and making people happy. Galvin arrives in a Washington suffering under a cloud of righteous misery and proceeds to turn the place upside down. He buys the city's most powerful newspaper, The Washington Sun and Tribune, and wields it like a sword, but in his path stands his old Harvard flame, Candace Ridgway, a beautiful and icy journalist known to her colleagues as the Mistress of Fact. Their fateful encounter, tangled in the mysteries of their past, is narrated by David Cantor, an acid-tongued reporter and Jerry Springer devotee who is drawn inexorably into the Sun King's orbit and is transformed by this unpredictable man.

In this wise and poignant novel, love is the final frontier for a generation of baby boomers at midlife--still young enough to reach for their dreams but old enough to glimpse the prospect of loss. The Sun King can light up a room, but can he melt the worldly bonds that constrain the Mistress of Fact? In The Sun King, David Ignatius proves with perceptive wit and haunting power that the phrase "Washington love story" isn't an oxymoron.

Review Quotes

"In this entertaining new novel, David Ignatius takes on the Nick Carraway role to tell the tale of the Gatsbyish Carl Sandburg Galvin, who, like a brilliant comet, momentarily dazzles the world of the Washington establishment." --Dominick Dunne

"This wonderfully written book tells an engrossing and surprising tale of power in Washington. The Sun King--Sandy Galvin--is not, as you might expect, a politician who thinks he's the center of the universe. Instead, this story takes us into other Capital City power centers--business, society, and the media--and offers intriguing insights into some of their more complex denizens, and the era that shaped them. A great read." --Cokie Roberts

"The Sun King is a love story about a beautiful, intelligent, successful young woman of our time and the man of Gatsby-like mystery and wealth who has always loved her. In this wonderfully turned story about Washington and journalism and the nature of story itself, their love affair is measured by ambition. The book is a very good read, strongly narrative, wise in its observations, its authenticity particularly about Washington, its clarity of language, and its skill in making the reader a part of the love story." --Susan Richards Shreve

"A splendid, star-crossed Gatsby update that roasts on the same skewer
Washington's power elite and the journalists they so easily
seduce....Fitzgerald's boozy gloom brightened with social satire,
bittersweet romance, and a comic send-up of all that newspapers hold dear,
from a man who's been there."
--Kirkus (starred)

"A thoroughly involving narrative with a sharp satiric edge, Ignatius's
contemporary take on the tragic confluence of love, power and ambition is a
sophisticated look at the media mystique and the movers and shakers in our
nation's capitol. His stylish, fluent prose, anchored with fine
atmospheric detail, gives the story texture and momentum."
--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

David Ignatius is the author of four acclaimed novels, the most recent of which is A Firing Offense. Currently an op-ed columnist at The Washington Post, he has also been a reporter and war correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He is a graduate of Harvard University and Cambridge University and lives in Washington, D.C.