The Emperor's Winding Sheet

(Paperback)

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Description

In this exciting historical adventure, a famished, exhausted, and terrified boy drops from the tree in which he has hidden just as Constantine, last Emperor of the Romans, is about to receive his crown. Thus Piers Barber, shipwrecked young seaman from Bristol, England, now renamed Vrethiki ("lucky find"), becomes an unwilling talisman to the Emperor, for it has been prophesied that if even one person who is at his side when he takes the crown stays with him always, the City will not perish.
Jill Paton Walsh brings a meticulous eye for detail and storyteller's skill to this tale of the fall of Constantinople and the siege that marked the end of the Byzantine Empire. Fractured by bitter rivalries and corruption, the City nevertheless inspired its defenders to extraordinary feats. Through the darkening months, Vrethiki finds renewed faith, inspired too to see the City as a vision worth dying for and the Emperor as his own true lord.

Reviews

"Never has the author written with such impact as she does in this fact-fantasy, dedicated to real victims of the infant industrial revolution .... Not even Dickens portrayed abused children as Walsh does here."

Author Bio

Jill Paton Walsh
Contributor residences (city, state or country if outside the US or Canada): Jill Paton Walsh was born in London and was educated at Oxford. She currently lives in Cambridge where, with John Rowe Townsend, she runs a small specialist imprint "Green Bay Publications." She is the author of many award-winning books for children. She won the Book World Festival Award in 1970 for FIREWEED; the Whitbread Prize in 1974 for THE EMPEROR'S WINDING SHEET; the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in 1976 for UNLEAVING; the Universe Prize in 1984 for A PARCEL OF PATTERNS and the Smarties Prize Grand Prix in 1986 for GAFFER SAMSON'S LUCK.