The Emperor's Babe

February 25, 2002
Employing the same narrative verse style that served her so well in her debut, Lara, British writer Evaristo travels back in time to tell the story of Zuleika, a libidinous but frustrated Sudanese woman who comes of age in a Roman-conquered London in A.D. 211. Spotted at the age of 11 by rich Roman senator Lucius Aurelius Felix, "a man thrice my age and thrice my girth," she lands in the lap of luxury when a wedding quickly takes place. But Felix's lack of libido soon turns the marriage into a prison, and when he begins to travel, jazzy teenager Zuleika hits the social scene in the urban maze that is Londinium and receives some flattering attention from a visiting Roman emperor, Septimus Severus. The two begin a brief but torrid affair until Evaristo wraps up her thin plot by sending Severus off to war as Felix returns to find that the entire community knows about the affair. Plot problems aside, most of this is an excuse for Evaristo to stretch her poetic muscles as she creates a beautiful, passionate African-cum-Roman woman as seen through the imagination of a highly liberated and sexual 21st-century poet. Despite the occasional burst of purple verse, she succeeds admirably in bringing a difficult and treacherous conceit to fruition, liberally indulging in irreverent asides, vivid vernacular speech and clever puns. The generally high quality of the poetry overshadows the failure of the book to develop into a genuine, full-fledged novel. This is a vividly imagined albeit distinctly modern look at a woman's role in Roman times by a talented writer with a fertile mind and a playful spirit.