Description

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

‘Wildly entertaining, deeply affecting’ Ali Smith

Londinium, AD 211. Zuleika is a modern girl living in an ancient world. She’s a back-alley firecracker, a scruffy Nubian babe with tangled hair and bare feet – and she’s just been married off a fat old Roman. Life as a teenage bride is no joke but Zeeks is a born survivor. She knows this city like the back of her hand: its slave girls and drag queens, its shining villas and rotting slums. She knows how to get by. Until one day she catches the eye of the most powerful man on earth, the Roman Emperor, and her trouble really starts…

Silver-tongued and merry-eyed, this is a story in song and verse, a joyful mash-up of today and yesterday. Kaleidoscoping distant past and vivid present, The Emperor’s Babe asks what it means to be a woman and to survive in this thrilling, brutal, breathless world.

Publisher Review

?Smart, imaginative, and readable . . . A rich farrago of historical fact and outrageous fancy.? (“The New York Times Book Review”) A heroine of ancient times for the modern age… a glittering fiction… brilliant.? (“The Times,” London) A riotous, racy whirl through Roman Londinium… Bernardine Evaristo has spun a captivating tale in verse.? (Robert Fagles) Smart, imaginative, and readable . . . A rich farrago of historical fact and outrageous fancy. (“The New York Times Book Review”) A heroine of ancient times for the modern age… a glittering fiction… brilliant. (“The Times,” London) A riotous, racy whirl through Roman Londinium… Bernardine Evaristo has spun a captivating tale in verse. (Robert Fagles) “Smart, imaginative, and readable . . . A rich farrago of historical fact and outrageous fancy.” (“The New York Times Book Review”) “A heroine of ancient times for the modern age… a glittering fiction… brilliant.” (“The Times,” London) “A riotous, racy whirl through Roman Londinium… Bernardine Evaristo has spun a captivating tale in verse.” (Robert Fagles) “A riotous, racy whirl through Roman Londinium . . . Bernardine Evaristo has spun a captivating tale in verse.”