The Emperor's Babe.by Bernadine Evaristo Viking, April 2002 $23.95, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 0-670-03071-6 Irreverent, wild, oddly familiar. Bernadine Evaristo's imaginative depiction of Londinium, Britannia--a remote northern outpost of the Roman Empire circa A.D. 211--is all of those things when viewed through the eyes of Zuleika, the clever young daughter of aloof, Nubian immigrants. Readers first meet Zuleika as an 11-year-old wild child running the streets with her friends. Her days of freedom come to a quick end when she is promised in marriage to Aurelius Felix, a rich Roman senator, by her social-climbing father. Zuleika is forced to grow up, quickly and violently, secluded in the gilded gild 1 tr.v. gild·ed or gilt , gild·ing, gilds 1. To cover with or as if with a thin layer of gold. 2. To give an often deceptively attractive or improved appearance to. 3. cage of a loveless marriage. Once his new bride is securely in place with tutors and handmaids, Felix is off to Rome and the arms of his pale concubine CONCUBINE. A woman who cohabits with a man as his wife, without being married. and children. Zuleika is suddenly the mistress of a grand palace where her color and background ensures a friendless existence, and even her own servants plot against her. Zuleika works hard to make the transition from slave to slave owner, inflicting small cruelties on the young freckled freck·le n. A small brownish spot on the skin, often turning darker or increasing in number upon exposure to the sun. tr. & intr.v. girls in her service. Close ties to old friends are her only saving grace aside from the poetry she learns to craft in her many moments of solitude. That is, until she meets the strapping, Libyan born Roman emperor Septimus Severus and begins the torrid affair that is her eventual downfall. The Emperor's Babe is Evaristo's second novel-in-verse. Her first, Lara (Angela Royal Publishers Ltd, 1997), won several awards, including the Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards' Best Book prize, and with good reason. The poetry in her sophomore effort is often engrossing engrossing, in English law, practice of acquiring a monopoly of goods in order to sell them at an inflated price. The offense was ordinarily limited to monopolies of foods. Related practices were forestalling, i.e. and provocative, and she freely mixes Standard English Stan·dard English n. The variety of English that is generally acknowledged as the model for the speech and writing of educated speakers. Usage Note: People who invoke the term Standard English , Latin phrases This page lists direct English translations of common Latin phrases, such as veni vidi vici and et cetera. Some of the phrases are themselves translations of Greek phrases, as Greek rhetoric and literature were highly regarded in Ancient Rome when Latin rhetoric and British street slang throughout the narrative. The story--which posits Zuleika firmly in the paradoxical place of the timelessly modern woman--is a Greek tragedy for the HBO-film generation. Unfortunately, the narrative itself often struggles to live up to the power of her poetry. --Samiya A. Bashir, coeditor of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Art & Literature. |
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