Ziska

In moonlit ancient Egypt, a woman's voice calls the name "Araxes," and the story opens on a haunting sense of destiny, reincarnation, and evil that seems to reach beyond death itself. From that occult prologue, the novel moves to Cairo, where Marie Corelli skewers Western tourists, fashionable invalids, and the self-important English elite for treating Egypt as a backdrop for comfort, vanity, and shallow amusement rather than wonder or reverence. Against this satirical social world, Princess Ziska emerges as a beautiful, unsettling figure whose eyes and reputation stir fascination, suspicion, and desire. At the Gezireh Palace Hotel and later at a costume ball, Sir Chetwynd Lyle, Lady Fulkeward, Ross Courtney, Dr. Maxwell Dean, Denzil Murray, and others circle around her with gossip and intrigue, while the painter Armand Gervase seems drawn into a deeper mystery linked to her and to the ancient name Araxes. When Gervase unveils a portrait of Ziska, the image shocks everyone: grotesque, death-haunted, and disturbingly suggestive of hidden truths. Blending romance, satire, occult menace, and psychological suspense, the novel builds toward a mystery that may be older than history itself. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.