In The Palace of Flowers
₦3,000.00 – ₦7,000.00
Sex and friendship, ambition and political intrigue, secrets and betrayal will set the fate of two slaves— Jamīla and Abimelech—in this ground-breaking debut novel.
Inspired by the only existing first-person narrative of an Abyssinian slave in Iran, Jamīla Habashī, In the Palace of Flowers recreates the opulent Persian royal court of the Qajars at the end of the nineteenth century. This is a precarious time of growing public dissent, foreign interference from the Russians and British, and the problem of an aging ruler and his unsuitable heir.
Torn away from their families, Jamila, a concubine, and Abimelech, a eunuch, now serve at the whims of the royal family, only too aware of their own insignificance in the eyes of their masters. Abimelech and Jamila’s quest to take control over their lives and find meaning leads to them navigating the dangerous politics of the royal court, and to the radicals that lie beyond its walls.
Richly textured and elegantly written, at its heart In The Palace of Flowers is a novel about the fear of being forgotten.
Victoria Princewill , author of In The Palace of Flowers is a British-born management consultant-turned-writer. She sees herself as a historical fiction novelist whose work is driven by a desire to write forgotten intelligent African women back into our world. Princewill was educated at Oxford and UCL and has earned a BA in English and MA in Philosophy. Her work on race and contemporary culture has been published by the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, the London Review of Books and n+1 magazine.
Victoria is currently working on her third degree at King’s College London in Neuroscience, she seeks to amass a breadth of knowledge across disciplines within the arts and sciences.
You can keep up to date with her writing at victoriaprincewill.com and follow her on clubhouse to experience more of the mind that brought the atmospheric debut novel In The Palace of Flowers to life.
| Weight | 0.5 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 60.0 × 0.4 × 6.0 cm |
| Book Type | Paperback, EPUB, PDF, Kindle |
| Book Author |
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“A book that is both decadent and intimate, In The Palace of Flowers opened up a part of history I knew nothing about and will stay with me for a very long time.”
– Ayesha Harruna Attah, author of The Hundred Wells of Salaga
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“With captivating storytelling skills and impressive historical knowledge, Victoria Princewill has written an awe-inspiring, dynamic and powerful novel about a part of African history that few other writers have told. In giving voice to Jamila Habashi, whose first person account is the only existing account of an Abyssinian slave in 19th c Iran, In The Palace of Flowers is both restorative and illuminating while gripping the reader’s mind with vivid and seductive language.”
– Minna Salami, author of Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone