Best for:
Fans of the author’s previous work. People who want to have to work really hard to understand what they are reading.

In a nutshell:
Zuleika is a Sudanese woman living on Londinium in 211. She is married as a pre-teen, then eventually starts an affair with the Roman emperor.

Worth quoting:
“She moaned she had no time to herself now. I moaned that was all I had.”

Why I chose it:
It was part of a subscription box.

Review:
I want to challenge myself as a reader, to learn more, to experience different styles of writing, to get inside the lives of others. But I also want to enjoy what I read. When I flipped open this book and saw it was written in verse, my first thought was ‘but why?’ My second thought was ‘I’ve got to at least give it a go.’

Life is short, and I kind of wish I’d gone with my gut on this one.

You likely have heard of author Evaristo - her book “Girl, Woman, Other” was everywhere in 2019 and 2020. My mother in law even recommended it to me, but when I flipped through it and saw it was written in verse, I declined to pick it up. I do not have a literary background, so freely admit that this book was likely just over my head. The plot was pretty loose, and given how few words are on any page when one writes in verse, I was surprised at how long it took me to finish it.

This is not a bad book. It is also not a book I enjoyed at all; I think I’m not sophisticated enough to follow it. I would have thoroughly enjoyed the plot had it been presented as a novella or short story, but for me, it just doesn’t work here.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it ( )

Zuleika, the daughter of Sudanese/Nubian immigrants to Londinium, becomes a child bride and then the mistress of the emperor Septimius Severus.

A brash bawdy romp, this novel in verse is basically a "Carry On Cleo" type of mixture of Roman stereotypes with knowing winks to the audience through references to modern place names in and around London and modern fashions. The cover gives the game away with Zuleika sporting a heart shaped tattoo enclosing the words "SEV IV ME". I loved it, but those who take their historical fiction seriously will hate it. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1415240.html

Zuleika, the narrator of The Emperor's Babe, is the daughter of Sudanese immigrants in London in the very early third century; she is married aged eleven to a Senator, and several years after starts a relationship with the visiting Emperor, Septimius Severus. I knew a little about him from Gibbon, who writes of him rather disapprovingly in Chapter V of Decline and Fall, though is more positive about him in Chapter VI when he goes to kill the Scots.

The Emperor's Babe is a rather startling book. Evaristo apparently composed it while writer-in-residence at the Museum of London and it breathes an intimate connection between the Roman city and today's geography - she uses mainly modern streetnames and toponyms, and has Zuleika a citizen of the racially and sexually diverse metropolis, attended by her Scottish slaves, educated by her husband to the point where she writes and recites her own poetry. Evaristo uses the setting to explore various obvious themes of race, class and gender, and does it vividly and thoroughly. Also her Septimius Severus comes to life as a much more sympathetic character than Gibbon's portrayal, though still believes in astrology.

The whole of The Emperor's Babe is in verse. It is a series of short digestible narrative vignettes, none more than a few pages long. Probably some of them refer to poems of the Classical era which I don't know, but that didn't hamper my enjoyment. I have a couple of other books of verse on the list for this month, so this has broken me in gently. ( )

http://www.web-den.org.uk/cgi-bin/wulfblosxom/2007/08/03#emperorsbabe.20070803 ( )