SOURCE: Hamilton, Jane, and Sybil Steinberg. “Jane Hamilton: A Kinship with Society's Outcasts.” Publishers Weekly 245, no. 5 (2 February 1998): 68-9.

In the following interview, Hamilton discusses the inspiration for the characters and themes of her novels through The Short History of a Prince.

A young man coming of age in suburban Illinois in the 1970s, obsessed with ballet, literature and classical music, aware that he's gay but determined to remain closeted. The protagonist of a novel by David Leavitt, Alan Gurganus or Dale Peck? Not this time. While these gay male writers would seem to own the territory, it's a female novelist praised for her depiction of women who has dared to trespass in an area generally reserved for men who have lived the experience.

The Short History of a Prince, Jane Hamilton's third novel, out soon from Random House isn't the first time this author, who claims apologetically to...