Craii de Curtea-Veche (known in English as Rakes of the Old Court or Gallants of the Old Court) is a novel by the inter-war Romanian author Mateiu Caragiale. Published in 1929, it took the author more than two decades to complete, and constituted his only major work. It has been translated into English by Sean Cotter as Rakes of the Old Court (2021) and by Cristian Baciu as Gallants of the Old Court (2011). The short epic is not as much celebrated for its plot as much as it is for its style, blending a contemplative attitude inspired by Marcel Proust and fin de siècle decadence, inviting the reader into a decaying, "Levantine" 19th-century Bucharest, and prefigurating the intense debate among a whole generation of Romanian intellectuals about what Romanian specificity is (a controversy which was to culminate in Emil Cioran's philosophy). Source: Wikipedia (en)