The Roman Empire did not meet its end when barbarians sacked
the City of Seven Hills, but rather a thousand years later with the
fall of Constantinople, capital of the surviving Eastern Empire.
The Ottoman Turks who conquered the city aslo known to us as
Byzantium would force a tense centruy of conflict in the
Mediterranean culminating in the famous Battle of Lepanto. The
first book in a triptych depicting this monumental confrontation
between a Muslim empire and Christendom, The Fall of Constantinople
brilliantly captures a defning moment in the two creeds'' history
too often eclipsed by the Crusades.
關於作者:
Nanami Shiono is the preeminent author of popular history in
Japanese today. In survey after survey, the most powerful Japanese
politicians and industrialists many of whom she counts as personal
friends name her as their favorite author, and she enjoys a degree
of influence in public discourse that few authors anywhere could
hope to match. In 1970, the same year she won the first of many
literary awards for her early masterpiece Cesare Borgia, or Elegant
Cruelty, she moved permanently to her adopted home of Italy.
Although she first rose to prominence as an author of works set in
Renaissance Italy, her expertise has widened to include the
Mediterranean as a whole, as well as ancient Rome which she treats
in her bestselling fifteen-volume history, The Tale of the Romans.
The East Mediterranean Trilogy, completed in 1987, remains among
her most enduringly popular works. The first volume, The Fall of
Constantinople, is available from Vertical, as well as The Siege of
Rhodes and the last volume, The Battle of Lepanto.