In a London prison, Sarah, committed to hang for the murder of a man, must escape her sentence and board the Rajah headed to Van Diemen’s Land. In the 1840s, 200 women guilty of petty crimes are to board the ship and start life afresh on the far away island. Sarah is determined to be one of them. The night before the prisoners in her cell are to board the ship, she drugs another inmate, ties her up, takes her name tag, and hides her under a blanket.
In Canton, a child’s family dies around him and Professor Lovell barges in and places a silver bar on the boy to revive him. Once the Chinese boy recovers, he travels by ship to the professor’s English estate where he is tutored for years in Greek and Latin. He substitutes his Chinese name for Robin and enters Oxford where he takes lectures in the Translation Department. There he meets three members of his cohort—Ramy (from Bengal), Victoria (originally from Haiti but brought up in France) and their only English student, Letty. They form a tight group in their first year, but changes occur when first Robin meets his half-brother in hiding, Griffin whose totally different perspective on the Translation Department’s objectives begin to set Robin on a different course.
This is a tale that on the surface appears to be part fantasy, but the underlying themes of racial prejudice, sexism, and British colonial greed ring true and lead these students on a dangerous journey.
Shaherazade and the Arabian Nights tales are familiar to everyone, but what about the life of Shaherazade? This is a fascinating read that begins in Persia when Shaherazade discovers that the Malik’s wife is unfaithful. The Malik is so distraught once he learns of his wife’s infidelity, he loses all reason once his wife is beheaded that Shaherazade’s father, the vizier cannot help him. A second wife, a third wife, and yet another cannot save him from despair, but can Shaherazade with her magical tales save him from the brink of disaster?
Set during the Crusades when Suladin is fighting against the infidels in Palestine, the novel mixes historical events with fiction to create a gripping tale.
What made this tale a five out of five read for me was that I had never read anything like it. Piranesi lives in a world where there is only one other human being—the Other. Within his house/world are huge statues in infinite rooms that he explores. The lower rooms are subject to tides that sometimes crash through the corridors. Piranesi is in awe of the Other whom he meets every week for an hour, but when he learns that there is someone else searching for him, the Other warns him of the danger. But will he be in danger? And why are there only two people in this strange world?
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