Tag: Portugal

The Golden City (2013): J. Kathleen Cheney

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★★★

Since entering the Amaral family’s service as companion to their self-willed daughter Isabel, Oriana Paredes has been drawn into more than a few of her employer’s whims. Isabel’s most recent plan, however, casts all the rest into shadow: she has arranged to elope to Paris with Marianus Efisio, her cousin’s fiance. Despite disapproving of the match, Oriana has decided to accompany Isabel, to protect her as far as possible on this threshold of her new life. And yet it transpires that it isn’t social scandal or even Efisio himself that Isabel has to fear.

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The Mapmaker’s Daughter (2014): Laurel Corona

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★★★

Shortly after finishing In the Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali I was inspired to seek out other books about 15th-century Spain. I wanted to understand more about this period, in which the last shreds of the convivencia of Al-Andalus disappeared forever (if it had ever truly existed). In its place arose the orthodox Catholic Spanish state, with its Inquisition and its autos-da-fé. Laurel Corona’s novel offers a perspective which perfectly complements Ali’s: while he tells the story of Reconquista from a Muslim point of view, Corona looks at the experience of the Jewish people in Spain and Portugal at the same date. It was only at the end of the book that I came to realise how cleverly she has woven her protagonist into the history of two real and very distinguished Jewish families.

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