Publisher's Synopsis
Karim and Isabel meet in Paris as kids living alone. She is modeling and they are both students. He is a prince and she is from an old royal family that went into hiding years ago. Distant cousins, they marry young in a child marriage and leave the modeling industry. There are attempts upon her life in Paris; she is knifed on their front doorstep. The two flee Paris and begin their journey across North Africa. They settle in Sidi Ifni, where they have children and live for some years. Karim becomes heir apparent to an important regional throne, and the credible death threats and attacks upon their lives begin again. They are forced apart and begin their life of torment. They live together and apart across the years, meeting from place to place. They are used at times by political powers for their notoriety and kept in hiding at others. The story begins in Paris and moves to North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The wars in the Middle East provide a backdrop to much of their life story as do dilemmas between love, autonomy, responsibility to rule, and personal loyalties to one another that cross space and time. The book begins in a twelve-year-old voice; the narrative becomes more worldly, intelligent, experienced -- and bittersweet -- as the characters age. The story includes some aspects of magical realism. A novella.
