EMPRESS: The Secret History of Anna K

The lost autobiography of an heir to the Byzantine Empire, and her impossible path to power.

In 2016, construction workers in Istanbul made a remarkable discovery. Sealed in a lead pot twelve feet underground was a lost manuscript by the Byzantine princess and historian Anna Komnene—an intimate account of the royals who held sway in Constantinople in the High Middle Ages. This is the first English translation of the Anekdota, or Secret History, of Anna Komnene (1083-1153). Not since the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed at Quran has an archeological find threatened to upend everything we know about a heretofore-fuzzy historical period.

“A magnificent work of imagination and scholarship, Greg Olear’s Empress: The Secret History of Anna K. reveals the intrigues of 11th and 12th century Byzantium. Princess Anna Komnene, a precocious child and shrewd adult, exposes the power grabs, turns of fortunes, betrayals, and alliances that gave rise and fall to one of the world’s great empires. Times, they do change, but human nature does not.”
—Ronlyn Domingue, internationally published author of The Mercy of Thin Air and the Keeper of Tales Trilogy

“With the imagination of a novelist and the exacting attention of a journalist, Greg Olear has written a transportative tale of sex, violence and politics. These timeless themes, and the characters they swirl around, make the richly embroidered tapestry of medieval details and Byzantine machinations he’s woven feel as urgent and compelling as current news.”
—Aja Raden, author of Stoned and The Truth About Lies