The Emperor's Babe: From the Booker prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other - Brossura

Bernardine Evaristo is the Anglo-Nigerian award-winning author of seven books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora: past, present, real, imagined. Her writing also spans short fiction, reviews, essays, drama and writing for BBC radio. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature.

As a literary activist for inclusion, Bernardine Evaristo has founded several successful initiatives including Theatre of Black Women (1982-86), Spread the Word writer development agency (1995-present); The Complete Works mentoring scheme for poets of colour (2007-17) and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (2012 - ongoing).

www.bevaristo.com

One of The Times 100 Best Books of the Decade 2009

'Adventurous, compelling and utterly original. You won't read another book like it' The Times

'Don't be so dramatic.

This isn't a Greek trageodia, though
it could be mistaken for one.'

Scroll back eighteen hundreds years to Londinium, AD 211, and slip down the side of Gracechurch Street. Here roams a back-alley beauty, a pulcherrima babe, a Nubian knock-out with tangled hair and bare feet.

Zuleika is a reluctant teenage bride with no idea about true love. She's too busy sneaking out with the slave girls and drag queens. Until one day she catches the eye of the most powerful man on earth - Emperor Septimus - and the trouble really starts...

Silver-tongued and merry-eyed, this is a tale to make the muses themselves roar with laughter and weep for pity. Kaleidoscoping distant past and vivid present, The Emperor's Babe sings a song of womanhood and of survival in this thrilling, brutal, breathless world.

'Zingy, witty, glistening [and] bittersweet... A modern work of art' The Sunday Times

'A daring evocation of black British history... Sexy, punchy [and] fresh' Independent on Sunday

'[A] novel in springy, street-smart verse that swings between sour-apple satire and piercing lyricism... Tough and vulnerable, comic and affecting' New York Times Book Review