Boy Caesar

The past comes to haunt contemporary London in this evocation of the life of the little-known Roman boy-emperor Heliogabalus. The Roman gay world is mirrored in Jim's relations with his duplicitous partner Danny and the contemporary London scene they inhabit. Events take a weird twist when Jim discovers that his partner is living a double life as a member of a Soho cult involving bizarre sex rites on Hampstead Heath. Jim, repulsed by the cult's activities, finds his relationship with Danny at an end and that he has become a target for the leader's reprisals. He is forced to take refuge with a female friend, Masako, with whom he visits Rome to investigate sites associated with Heliogabalus. She leads him to a meeting with a wealthy young man called Antonio who claims to be the emperor reincarnated. When Jim and Masako return to London, Antonio pays them a visit which leads to a conclusion every bit as dramatic as Heliogabalus' own murder. An electrifying poetic recreation of a bizarre period of ancient history, this narrative also dissolves boundaries of gender in the complex relationship of Jim and Masako. A tale of witchcraft and retribution in 14th-century Yorkshire is told through the eyes of a penitent monk. In the credulous squalor of medieval Yorkshire, a peasant girl is accused of being a sorceress. The suffering inflicted upon her by male superstition sparks a spectacular and terrifying retort which initiates the legend of Sycorax. Many years later, the story is recounted by Edmund, a flawed monk at Byland Abbey, who sets out to write a history of the witch as a penance for lascivious fantasies. In the process, he uncovers a brutal and eerie tale in which he becomes fatally involved. Not just a trip into another epoch, and more than just another supernatural thriller, this cunning mock-translation of the medieval tale of Sycorax reveals that the compulsions and delusions examined are endemic in us all today