The Empress Of The Last Days

"Spectacular talent...great intellectual sharpness... [This] is a profoundly satisfying end to a magnificent sequence" Guardian "Jane Stevenson's touch is so light, her learning so deep and wide, that you enter another country which, while foreign, soon feels as familiar as your own" Daily Telegraph "The Empress of the Last Days is a detective story and an account of 'a game of snakes and ladders for young academics', but it is also a novel of ideas...it's refreshing to read an accessible fiction that races at serious themes with its horns lowered" Observer "Stevenson deftly strikes a balance between lush romanticism and cool contemporary realism" Sunday Times "Stevenson is excellent at historical detail and on relationships in history...she has whetted our appetite for more delicious tastes from the past" Scotsman