Items related to Peppery Winds: A Novel of the 1st Century C.E.
Two young men of very different backgrounds, a spice merchant from Alexandria and a construction supervisor in the Temple in Jerusalem, set out on a newly-discovered open sea route to India, the home of black pepper.
In Rome the demand for black pepper is insatiable and its price, sky-high. If the young men can successfully exploit this new route and thereby end the Arab monopoly on the pepper trade, glory and profits are theirs. But their assignment is fraught with danger: three murders have already been committed in order to preserve the secret of the open sea passage.
Woven into this carefully researched 1st century CE tale of intrigue, love, adventure and revenge, is also a story of the first anti-Jewish pogrom, an encounter with the inscrutable Roman Emperor Caligula and a depiction of early Jewish and Greek settlements in India.
In Rome the demand for black pepper is insatiable and its price, sky-high. If the young men can successfully exploit this new route and thereby end the Arab monopoly on the pepper trade, glory and profits are theirs. But their assignment is fraught with danger: three murders have already been committed in order to preserve the secret of the open sea passage.
Woven into this carefully researched 1st century CE tale of intrigue, love, adventure and revenge, is also a story of the first anti-Jewish pogrom, an encounter with the inscrutable Roman Emperor Caligula and a depiction of early Jewish and Greek settlements in India.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Lorenz Waldmann holds advanced degrees in history and anthropology. His lasting interest in distant places and times, particularly India, is the happy consequence of travels beginning in early childhood. He now lives in Boca Raton, Florida.
Review:
PEPPERY WINDS is an adventurous epic novel set in the first century AD, opening with the drama of terrifying and murderous anti-Semitic riots in Alexandria, where Jews and Greeks had lived in peace for generations following a delegation of Jewish leaders led by the scholar Philo to appeal to Emperor Caligula for protection, and culminating in an epic trade voyage to southern India, seeking a new route to bring back the pepper elite Romans crave, and for which they pay vast sums. Our heroes are Amram, a devout young Jewish man with an interest in surveying and no interest in his father's banking business, and Aristides, a Greek sympathetic to the Jews, who seeks adventure and profit for his spice import business, but regrets leaving his dying mother behind.
The dramatic sweep of the novel covers a wide and colorful range of cultures, religions, practices and beliefs with vivid clarity and depth. Characters are fully human, fleshed out and real, reacting to each other with the startled surprise of people finding out that the way they have always done things is not the norm everywhere. From the Jewish Alexandrians trying to negotiate the conflicts between Jewish identity and the Greco-Roman world to the stoics, philosophers, politicians, schemers and social climbers in Rome, to the Buddhist Greeks, matrilineal Nayars, and the caste and purity-conscious Hindu court of the autocratic Rajah of Kerala, the author explores human interaction with an ethnographer's zeal and a contagious sense of wonder and delight. The plot rambles quite as much as the characters do, and sometimes threats build up suspense only to fizzle out in the end, but that's very forgivable, given the rich novelty on the other side of every page. Unpredictable rulers, storms at sea, and pirates provide suspense and danger, gentle touches of romance and familial affection provide warmth, and the author's deft descriptive ability presents a past both foreign and recognizable, immediately present and yet just a bit out of reach.
PEPPERY WINDS is more of a travelogue than an adventure novel, but as a travelogue, it succeeds beautifully in presenting the reader with a vibrant and diverse ancient world, a world populated not with marble statues or historical footnotes but living, breathing human beings.
Reviewed by Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader.
The dramatic sweep of the novel covers a wide and colorful range of cultures, religions, practices and beliefs with vivid clarity and depth. Characters are fully human, fleshed out and real, reacting to each other with the startled surprise of people finding out that the way they have always done things is not the norm everywhere. From the Jewish Alexandrians trying to negotiate the conflicts between Jewish identity and the Greco-Roman world to the stoics, philosophers, politicians, schemers and social climbers in Rome, to the Buddhist Greeks, matrilineal Nayars, and the caste and purity-conscious Hindu court of the autocratic Rajah of Kerala, the author explores human interaction with an ethnographer's zeal and a contagious sense of wonder and delight. The plot rambles quite as much as the characters do, and sometimes threats build up suspense only to fizzle out in the end, but that's very forgivable, given the rich novelty on the other side of every page. Unpredictable rulers, storms at sea, and pirates provide suspense and danger, gentle touches of romance and familial affection provide warmth, and the author's deft descriptive ability presents a past both foreign and recognizable, immediately present and yet just a bit out of reach.
PEPPERY WINDS is more of a travelogue than an adventure novel, but as a travelogue, it succeeds beautifully in presenting the reader with a vibrant and diverse ancient world, a world populated not with marble statues or historical footnotes but living, breathing human beings.
Reviewed by Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
- Publication date2016
- ISBN 10 151412081X
- ISBN 13 9781514120811
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages430
- Rating
Buy New
Learn more about this copy
US$ 32.52
Shipping:
US$ 11.18
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Stock Image
Peppery Winds: A Novel of the 1st Century C.E.
Published by
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
(2016)
ISBN 10: 151412081X
ISBN 13: 9781514120811
New
Paperback / softback
Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. This item is printed on demand. New copy - Usually dispatched within 5-9 working days. Seller Inventory # C9781514120811
Buy New
US$ 32.52
Convert currency