Book description
In a small holiday village on the coast of Crete, Ingrid Laurie is
researching a biography of the neglected linguist Alice Kober, who
laid the basis for the decipherment of the ancient Cretan script
Linear B, but died too young to reap the rewards of her work. While
Ingrid struggles to decipher the life of the enigmatic scholar, on the
outskirts of the village local policeman Yiannis Stephanoudakis
discovers a bizarre naked corpse covered in honey and dead bees. When
their paths cross in the course of the investigation erotic sparks
fly. Mingling detective fiction and biography, modern romance and
prehistoric marriage ritual, Alison Fell probes the mysteries of love
and language in this intricately-crafted, luminous novel
Alison Fell was born in Dumfries, Scotland in 1944. She was educated
at Dumfries Academy and Edinburgh Art College. She began writing for
Scotland Magazine in 1962, and moved to London in 1970, where she
co-founded the Woman's Street Theatre Group, later known as 'Monstrous
Regiment'. She held the School of English and American Studies Writing
Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in 1998. She has published
poetry and fiction for both adults and children, and has written for a
number of publications, including Spare Rib magazine. She was joint
winner of the Boardman Tasker Memorial Prize for her novel Mer de Glace
(1991), and held a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship for 2002-3 based at
University College London. Other novels include The Pillow Book of the
Lady Onogoro (1994), The Mistress of Lilliput (1999), and Tricks of the
Light (2003), a powerful portrayal of love in middle age.
