Funny, funky, seductive and lyrical, Bernardine Evaristo's novel in verse is a triumph of imaginative writing. Londinium, 211AD. A city of slum tenements and sumptuous villas. A city where the currency is often sex, where children go to work aged five, and marriage is a career move. The striking Zuleika, feisty daughter of Sudanese immigrants, child-bride of an ageing Roman businessman, bored with villa life, bored with sex, bored with her ever-absent husband, meets the Emperor Septimus Severus and her life changes forever.