The Hero of Negropont

A comedy, a history, a fiction...
The year is 1788. George III is on the throne. To escape debt and court summonses, dashing Lord Exford is exiled to Constantinople with a straitlaced tutor and a grumpy artist. On the way they are shipwrecked on a Greek island ruled by a Turkish pasha and populated with tales of passion and delusion. Star-crossed lovers, renegades and minstrels, pirates and djinn are just some of the characters our travellers encounter. They also meet Amelia Burbage, a botanist, feminist and intrepid explorer, accompanied by her Syrian servant and their bad-tempered camel.
Befuddled by a heady mix of love, hashish and his classical education, Exford's delusional tutor takes on the might of the Sultan and it is left to the wily Exford to deliver his eccentric band from an unspeakable fate.
Between Ancient Greece and Modern Greece were four centuries of Ottoman Greece. Join Lord Exford on an Odyssey that owes less to Homer than the brand new musical comedy of the time.
'Readers are in for a treat' - ARGO, journal of the Hellenic Society, London