VSIt is a mind-blowing sum, with an unheard-of detail and characters as lively as they are shimmering – sensual and shrewd princesses of Istanbul, palace doctors and heroically medal-winning officers, Greek bandits on the run and leaders of mysterious brotherhoods, popes and pashas – evolving in an impeccable and exciting romantic construction, both Belle Époque and oriental. It’s a page of history in 700 pages, full of rose sorbets and rats, political and love stories. A police investigation, too, with assassins, suspects, and a detective in an armored carriage circulating in the Edenic landscape of a Mediterranean island where the scents of the sea mingled with those of lemon trees and honeysuckles, before death struck, and the rumors that go…
