Rasa Aškinytė

Late Roman period - 2nd century. Amber, furs and metals are traded on the Amber Road, which connects the land of the Aesir people on the Baltic Sea with Rome. The novel's seven-part structure - seven scenes, seven sub-scenes, and seven characters - balances the historical, the mythical, and the mundane.
In Aškinytė's typical compact, cinematic prose, she intertwines the fates of two strong women struggling to find their place in society. Selija is the wife of the Aesir tribal leader, who is aware of her position and defends it passionately. Glesum (Latin for amber) is a former slave from a noble family whom Gondas, the tribal leader, brought back from a trading trip on the Amber Road. She becomes his secret lover. The tension between these two women - the wife and the mistress - love and hate, ambition, the desire for power and security, and ritual and magic drive the story, which is more poetic reconstruction than historical novel. The author knows how to take the reader into a distant past that is only barely accessible.