From Publishers Weekly
A real-life 18th-century kidnapping is reimagined by biographer Wallach (Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell) in this richly detailed first novel. Thirteen-year-old Aim‚e du Buc de Rivery is abducted by pirates on her way home to Martinique from boarding school in France and taken to the harem of the Ottoman ruler. Given the name Nakshidil and forced to abandon her Catholicism for Islam, she is befriended by Tulip, a black eunuch and the book's narrator, who helps her to realize she can improve her status by catching the eye of the sultan. Wallach enhances the already seductive story with convincing details and observations, skillfully resisting the temptation to either burden the reader with excessive historical information or descend into the baroque. After a series of machinations, Nakshidil is comfortably installed as the concubine of the sultan's successor, Selim, and placed in charge of raising Selim's orphaned young cousin Mahmud. After her native France, under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, invades Ottoman lands, Nakshidil is shunned, and she and Tulip prepare to spend their final years in misery. But then Mahmud, now Nakshidil's adopted son, comes to power, and his first decree as sultan is that his mother will be "Valide Sultan," the most powerful woman in the empire. It is to Wallach's credit that at no point does her story seem preposterous. The intrigue and drama of the palace are balanced by capable, authoritative prose and admirable restraint, resulting in a novel at once serious and enchanting.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Wallach builds her first novel around the abduction of a young French girl--a cousin of Napoleon's wife Josephine--at the end of the seventeenth century and her sale into the sultan of Turkey's seraglio. Aimee du Buc de Rivery was only 13 when her ship was captured by pirates and she was taken to the seraglio. Renamed Nakshidil, she is befriended by the eunuch Tulip, but she fights against her enslavement and the rules of the seraglio. As she adapts to her new life, she catches the eye of the old sultan. But it is Selim, the sultan who succeeds him, who captures her heart. She becomes his lover and his confidante, sharing with him the books and knowledge of the West. It is through her adoptive son, Mahmud, who eventually becomes sultan, that Nakshidil gains true power and influence when she is named valide sultan, the second-most powerful position in the empire. A lush, rich tale of a clever woman and her loyal friend who navigate a world full of treacherous politics and ruthless enemies. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
Praise for Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell

"Wallach deals superbly with Arab politics and history, unfolding clearly the extraordinary complications that surrounded the corrupt and enfeebled Ottoman Empire..."
-The New Yorker

"Janet Wallach handles the complex politics of the period with ease and authority..."
-San Francisco Chronicle

"In Desert Queen, scholarship and imagination work together. Wallach knows her subject so well that she can recreate the rhythm of Bell?s own zest."
-Chicago Tribune

"[Janet Wallach] is an expert on the region and her knowledge is on full display..."
-New York Times Book Review

FROM THE PUBLISHER

At the age of thirteen, when en route from school in France to her home in Martinique, Aimee du Buc is kidnapped by Algerian pirates. Blond and blue-eyed, the graceful young girl is a valuable commodity, and she is soon placed in service in the Seraglio (sir-al-ee-o) - the Ottoman sultan's private world - in Topkapi Palace. As du Buc, renamed Nakshidil ("embroidered on the heart"), discovers the erotic secrets that win the hearts of kings and deftly learns the affairs of the empire, she struggles to retain her former identity, including her Christian faith. Over time, Nakshidil becomes the intimate of several powerful sultans: concubine to one, favored wife and confidante to another, and adoptive mother to a third. Her life often treads the tenuous line between sumptuous pleasures and mere survival until her final years, when she is awarded control of the harem as the valide, mother of the sultan.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

A real-life 18th-century kidnapping is reimagined by biographer Wallach (Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell) in this richly detailed first novel. Thirteen-year-old Aim e du Buc de Rivery is abducted by pirates on her way home to Martinique from boarding school in France and taken to the harem of the Ottoman ruler. Given the name Nakshidil and forced to abandon her Catholicism for Islam, she is befriended by Tulip, a black eunuch and the book's narrator, who helps her to realize she can improve her status by catching the eye of the sultan. Wallach enhances the already seductive story with convincing details and observations, skillfully resisting the temptation to either burden the reader with excessive historical information or descend into the baroque. After a series of machinations, Nakshidil is comfortably installed as the concubine of the sultan's successor, Selim, and placed in charge of raising Selim's orphaned young cousin Mahmud. After her native France, under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, invades Ottoman lands, Nakshidil is shunned, and she and Tulip prepare to spend their final years in misery. But then Mahmud, now Nakshidil's adopted son, comes to power, and his first decree as sultan is that his mother will be "Valide Sultan," the most powerful woman in the empire. It is to Wallach's credit that at no point does her story seem preposterous. The intrigue and drama of the palace are balanced by capable, authoritative prose and admirable restraint, resulting in a novel at once serious and enchanting. (Jan. 21) Forecast: This novel might easily be lost in a sea of similarly titled and jacketed historical romances, but Wallach's reputation as an author of serious nonfiction and an expert on the Middle East (she and her husband, John Wallach, have coauthored three books on the region) should help set it apart. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Originally intended as a biography, this book traces the life of Aimee du Buc de Rivery, Empress Josephine's cousin, who was kidnapped at age 13 en route to her home in Martinque. Her pirate captors take her to the Turkish sultan, who enslaves her in the seraglio (secluded rooms) of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. There, Aimee befriends Tulip, the black eunuch responsible for her welfare. Tulip recounts Aimee's reluctant initiation into the harem as Nakshidil, her dramatic development from slave girl to woman of pleasure, and her incredible transformation into the valide sultan (mother of the sultan). In that role, Nakshidil serves as the premier confidante to her son, the Sultan Mahmud, assisting him in his controversial attempt to westernize 18th-century Turkey. The dialog is occasionally wooden, but Wallach (Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell) has chosen a sturdy foundation for her first novel. Conspiracies and coups abound, and the mixture of religion and politics is highly combustible. Recommended.-Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon Lib. Syst., Eugene Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

The New York Times

While presenting lavish detail and relevant historical developments, like the arrival in Turkey of the fashionable fez, Ms. Wallach also manages to include scheming, leering, chicanery and wardrobe that would not be out of place in Beverly Hills. Janet Maslin

Kirkus Reviews

Historical-romance debut by Wallach (Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, 1996, etc.): based on a true case, of the Sultan's harem in early 19th-century Constantinople.

In 1788, Aim￯﾿ﾽe de Buc de Rivery, 13-year-old Creole daughter of a prominent family in Martinique, was returning from convent school in France when her ship was captured by pirates. She was sold to a slave trader in Tunis who, in turn, sold her to the household of the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople, where she was initiated into his seraglio. The seraglio was a place of astonishing, disorienting weirdness: The several hundred women there led lives of unfathomable luxury and ease in what was essentially a prison. Forbidden to venture beyond the palace walls, watched day and night by court eunuchs, and denied even the rudiments of education, the women filled their days by bathing, receiving instruction (from the eunuchs) in every imaginable sexual technique, and gossiping. The sultan could not possibly sleep with all of his thousands of wives, so there was a great deal of competition among those who wished to receive his attention. Aim￯﾿ﾽe, understandably slow in picking up the rules of the game, eventually scored a coup when she was summoned to spend the night with the sultan-only to have him die later in the evening. Ordinarily this would have resulted in her banishment, but the new sultan was enraptured by her skill on the violin and made her one of his favorites. Eventually, she bore him a son who succeeded his father in the sultanate and proceeded to institute a number of pro-Western reforms (such as the banning of turbans). Aim￯﾿ﾽe survived it all-the intrigues of the court, the army coups, thebitchiness in the harem-and was allowed the privilege of receiving last rites from a Jesuit on her deathbed.