Londinium, 211 AD. A city of slum tenements and sumptuous villas, of orgy queens, drag queens and drama queens. A city where the currency is often sex, where children go to work aged five and marriage is a career move.

Through the bustling city, we follow Zuleika – feisty and precocious daughter of Sudanese immigrants-made-good. Married off at eleven to Felix, a rich Roman three times her age, perpetually away on business, Zuleika drifts about his villa, bored, until one night several years later when Septimius Severus, the Roman emperor, newly arrived in town, spots her at the theatre....

This is the unforgettable story of Zuleika, the Emperor's Babe, told through a dazzling fusion of poetry and fiction, history and myth. Funny, funky, seductive and lyrical, this novel in verse is a triumph of imaginative writing.