Through the bustling city of Londinium we follow Zuleika - feisty and precocious daughter of Sudanese immigrants made good Married at the age of 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 The story is told through a fusion of poetry and fiction, history and myth