by Lee Langley (Author)
A richly imaginative novel of love, loss, time and the rise and fall of a great maritime empire, that sends two thwarted lovers spiralling through the chaos of history. The story begins in 1429 on Madeira, when a peasant girl meets a boy- a Jewish outsider- from a Portuguese sailing ship. Esperanca and Emmanuel know they must part when the ship sails. From that first meeting and parting, others follow...Emmanuel is in turn sailor, mapmaker, bookseller, jazz musician; Esperanca an illiterate peasant, a rich girl in Faro and a clever, bookish recluse who confronts a murderer in nineteenth-century Lisbon. In twentieth-century London, Esperanca is faced with a double incarnation, one of the true Emmanuel and the other a shadow. Over the centuries the couple face peril and tenderness. Each life is short. What survives is love.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 368
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 07 Mar 2002
ISBN 10: 009943346X
ISBN 13: 9780099433460
Book Overview: An intriguing love story, strong in narrative and rich in imagination, which re-creates the same heroine through the ages, and weaves stories round her love for a clever and sympathetic man, who through the centuries represents the powerful attractions of the Jewish tradition.