Mark Prins

Mark Prins is an American novelist whose debut combines classical scholarship with the suspense of an academic power struggle. The Latinist follows Tessa Templeton, an Oxford doctoral candidate preparing to defend her thesis while searching for a university post. She discovers that Christopher Eccles, the adviser whose approval has shaped her career, has quietly undermined her applications so that she will remain dependent on him. Tessa's work on a previously unknown second-century Roman poet offers a route to independence, but it also draws research, desire, and professional rivalry into the same contest. Norton issued The Latinist in 2022 as a contemporary reimagining of the Apollo and Daphne myth. Prins studied at Williams College, Exeter College, Oxford, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, experience that informs the novel's attention to Latin poetry and institutional custom. The classical parallel does not merely decorate the campus setting. It gives Tessa a language for recognizing pursuit, transformation, and possession while she tries to reclaim authorship of her own intellectual life.