The Emperor's Babe by Bernardine Evaristo

They shift the moving Toyshop of their Heart Pope writes in iambic pentameter couplets, Bolt in tetrameter couplets: the rhymes come round two metrical feet quicker and there isn't much space for word-painting or time to breathe. But compared to these, Bolt sets himself an almost impossible task technically. More recently, John Fuller's The Illusionists mined similar territory: sweet heroine at large in London's demi-monde. As a frothy tale of a girl's attempt to lose her virginity, it brings Pope's The Rape of the Lock to mind. Of these, only The Golden Gate achieved the difficult feat of being both a page-turning novel and a bravura feat of satisfying verse. There have been many attempts in recent years - Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, Les Murray's Fredy Neptune, Craig Raine's History: The Home Movie, Derek Walcott's Omeros.

The temptations of verse can be a snare, and one usually best resisted is to make a novel out of the stuff. Losing It reminds us why light verse became unfashionable in the first place: because it tends towards archness, whimsy, inconsequentiality, the banal tricked out as something portentous. Light verse has come in out of the cold.īut if Wendy Cope is light verse, Ranjit Bolt is verse lite. Wendy Cope has a lot to do with it, and there are many expert practitioners of verse around these days: James Fenton, Tony Harrison, Sophie Hannah, John Fuller, Kit Wright.

Kaleidoscoping distant past and vivid present, The Emperor's Babe asks what it means to be a woman and to survive in this thrilling, brutal, breathless world.Verse has staged a comeback in recent years - that is, the stuff that scans and rhymes, rather than poetry, which can be loaded with significance, symbols, metaphor and the meaning of life but doesn't have to rhyme and scan. Silver-tongued and merry-eyed, this is a story in song and verse, a joyful mash-up of today and yesterday. Until one day she catches the eye of the most powerful man on earth, the Roman Emperor, and her trouble really starts. She knows this city like the back of her hand: its slave girls and drag queens, its shining villas and rotting slums. Life as a teenage bride is no joke but Zeeks is a born survivor. She's a back-alley firecracker, a scruffy Nubian babe with tangled hair and bare feet - and she's just been married off to a fat old Roman.

Zuleika is a modern girl living in an ancient world. Winner of The Nesta Fellowship Award 2003.Ī coming-of-age tale to make the muses themselves roar with laughter and weep for pity - sassy, razor-sharp and transformative - from the acclaimed author of Mr Loverman. From the Booker prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other.

The Emperor's Babe by Bernardine Evaristo