Aimee Dubucq was still a child when she found herself in the hands of pirates while en route from France to her home in Martinique. Blonde and blue-eyed, the genteel young girl was a valuable commodity, and she was soon placed in service in the Seraglio -- the Ottoman Emperor's private world -- in Topkapi Palace. Brilliantly reimagining Dubucq's story, biographer and Middle East expert Janet Wallach brings to life a resilient woman who quickly gained power in her new surroundings by mastering the arts of pleasing a man.Transporting readers to the menacing yet majestic world of eighteenth-century Turkey, "Seraglio" portrays the sensual, savvy persona that made Dubucq, an intimate of several powerful sultans -- as a wife to one, a lover and confidante to another, and an adoptive mother to a third. As she discovers the erotic secrets that win the favor of kings, Nakshidil (as Dubucq is renamed) also becomes privy to bloodthirsty conspiracies, treading a dangerous yet often thrilling line between sumptuous pleasures and mere survival; eventually, she is even awarded control of the harem and a vital role in the affairs of the Empire. As she struggles to retain her former identity, including her Catholic faith, Nakshidil's tale provides a passionate glimpse of East-West history through one woman's distinctly European eyes.