The Drowning Guard cover art

The Drowning Guard

A Novel of the Ottoman Empire

Preview

Get 30 days of Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30-day free trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options
Buy Now for £22.99

Buy Now for £22.99

About this listen

Each morning in the hour before dawn, a silent boat launches on the Bosphorous, moving swiftly into the deepest part of the waters halfway between Europe and Asia, where a man will die....

In a gender reversal of Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights: Tales from a 1,001 Nights, Ottoman princess Esma Sultan seduces a different Christian lover each night, only to have him drowned in the morning. The Sultaness's true passion burns only for the Christian-born soldier charged with carrying out her brutal nightly death sentence: her drowning guard, Ivan Postivich.

The Drowning Guard explores the riddle of Esma - who is at once a murderer and a champion and liberator of women - and the man who loves her in spite of her horrifying crimes. This textured historical novel, set in the opulence and squalor of Istanbul in 1826, is woven with the complexity and consequences of love.

©2013 Linda Lafferty (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Crime Imperialism Ottoman Empire Middle Ages Middle East
All stars
Most relevant
A wonderful trip back to the Ottoman Empire. The novel is filled with love, cruelty, suspense, and the clash of beliefs of the social castes of characters whose lives entwine by chance and finally by choice in this wonderful historical novel.

A wonderful trip back to the Ottoman Empire

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.