From Publishers Weekly
What if the harem were not, as widely supposed, a construct for male pleasure, but instead a sophisticated apparatus for female power? That's the conceit behind British writer Irwin's brief, sensual tale, first published in England in 1997 and just now reaching our shores. Orkhan, an Ottoman prince, has lived his entire childhood locked in a palace wing, closely guarded by eunuchs. One day he is named sultan and released into the harem, given no instruction, but cryptically warned by a deaf vizier about the power of the women he will encounter (for example, Orkhan should not "let the viper drink at the Tavern of the Perfume-Makers"). Eager to exploit his new position, Orkhan plunges into a series of sexual adventures with women provided from the ends of the Ottoman Empire, though each episode is tinged with horror (in flagrante he is greeted by his brother's corpse, staring from beneath a sheet of ice). Irwin, the author of the underappreciated novel The Arabian Nightmare, pulls out all the stops in creating the strange world of the harem, including a leather-wrapped, Russian concubine named Roxelana who wouldn't be out of place in an East Village nightclub. The novel sets a furious pace, flitting from one odd room and liaison to the next, giving Orkhan (and the reader) little time to puzzle out exactly who's in charge. Part erotica, part serious political exploration, this book will titillate some readers and befuddle others.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
Gulliver's Travels meets
The Story of O, with Tantric overtones, in Irwin's erotic Arabian fable. Orkhan, heir to the sultan's throne, is released from his princely confinement and put through a farcical series of initiations into the harem women's cult of the prayer cushions. In the harem he meets beautiful but imperious Anadil; Perizade, Anadil's older and more experienced servant; Roxelana, the animal girl, who works in the harem zoo; Mihrimah, the parrot; and Valide, his mother and the ruler of the harem. The final ritual of initiation, say the women, will wed him to a goddess and transform him into the Golden Man
if Orkhan will only allow himself to be simultaneously strangled and fellated. Warned by the harem's male inhabitants against a dwarf who pretends to be the sultan's vizier and a guard who castrated himself to be free of sexual desire, Orkhan must choose whether to place himself in the hands of the mysterious and capricious harem women or seek his own destiny in a world he has never seen.
Bonnie JohnstonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
