The blurb is excited: From the acclaimed author of Empires of Sand comes a mesmerizing new adventure. Sweeping from the drawing rooms of Paris to the palace of Suleiman the Magnificent to the dark hold of a slave ship racing across the sea, here is a dazzling story of love and valor, innocence and identity, an epic novel of the clash of civilizations on a barren island where the future was forged.
By David Ball; 2004; 688 pages. Also published as Sword and the Scimitar, 2003.