2021/002: Empire -- Devi Yesodharan

I would have been someone with a destiny. A hero is loved. A wife, a mother is loved. Am I in any way loved, Avvai? You have gifted me my loneliness. [loc. 2063]

I wasn't familiar with the history of the Chola empire, which dominated southern India for nearly a thousand years: Empire, which focusses on the experience of a female Greek prisoner-of-war during the 11th century, was fascinating and educational as well as being a good read.

A Greek pirate fleet attacks the Chola city of Nagapattinam, 'the jewel of the Indian Ocean', and is roundly defeated. Anantha, the Chola commander, requires compensation for the men he has lost: sixty able-bodied Greek youths. What he gets are twenty teenaged boys and one adolescent girl, Aremis, who's already proficient with a sword. (Her father is the Greek captain's second-in-command.) The Chola don't think women can wield swords efficiently, so they train her up as an archer. She grows up an outsider, always wary, often in danger: but she's a good enough warrior to be chosen as the bodyguard of the emperor, Rajendra Chola -- and, later, to carry out 'dark' missions for her king.

Anantha, meanwhile, is becoming disillusioned with Rajendra's politics. He believes that an ancient prophecy about a dark woman warrior with dagger and bow may refer to Aremis, and that she, having no family and no ties, might be the perfect tool with which to shape the future of the empire.

There's a marvellous sense of the wider world here, a world where Roman coins are still in circulation, where the Cholas trade with China for silk and steel, and Greek sailors trade and pillage all around the coast of Asia. The Chola empire is also vividly depicted, with its patriarchal restrictions (Aremis is told to smile more: nobody cares if the male warriors smile) and the everyday life of its citizens as much a part of the story as the political machinations of the neighbouring Srivijayans or the mystery of the queen who's returned after having been assumed dead for many years.

The plot seemed to fade away towards the end of the novel: or perhaps the focus on the emotional relationships, especially between Anantha and Aremis, assumed more importance than the palace intrigues, the grief and vengeance, and the empire-building. Both protagonists are, first and foremost, soldiers -- Anantha with a rather idealistic streak, Aremis with a burden of resentment -- and I didn't find their motivations altogether relatable. But the depiction of medieval India was fascinating, and even minor characters were brought to life by Yesodharan's prose, which reminded me in places of Rosemary Sutcliff.

Read for the 'Longlisted for the JCB Prize' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2021. I wasn't familiar with the JCB Prize, which is awarded for 'a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian author': I probably wouldn't have found this novel, but a friend sent me a link to Amazon, where it's available for 49p!