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Anna of Byzantium
Tracy Barrett. New York: Delacorte Press, 1999. 224 pp.
$14.95. Grades 7-up. ISBN 0-385-32626-2.
Barrett dedicates her book to the "forgotten women writers" of the Middle Ages, who, like Anna Comnena, were actually as literate as were men in comparable social positions. Princess Anna is the true-life author of The Alexiad, an elevenvolume story of her father's reign over the Byzantine Empire centered in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) from 1083 to 1118. Anna's history is a major source from which scholars learn about this area and this period. Barrett is a scholar specializing in the Middle Ages. While she has written several nonfiction books and articles, Anna of Byzantium is her first fictional story. Its writing was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Princess Anna was the first-born...