Hush: A Slave Princess' Tale

‘Hush, Melkorka. You really do need to learn when to hush.’ These words, spoken by an Irish queen to her petulant 15-year-old princess daughter, occur early in Napoli’s novel and will come to be seen as having lasting significance, sufficient significance to give the novel its title and to give its heroine the opportunity to reveal at one point that ‘“Hush” has become my internal chant.’ The circumstances which have created this development provide us with a fascinating work of historical fiction. Based on some fragmentary details from an ancient Icelandic saga and set in 10th-century Ireland, this is initially a story of how our teenage princess and a younger sister, Brigid, are kidnapped by marauding Vikings. But it is only with Brigid’s escape (and her subsequent disappearance from the novel) that the focus really comes to be on Melkorka and her bid for survival amid the degrading conditions on board the slave ship on which she is imprisoned. Here is where her self-enforced silence comes powerfully to her aid as the ship’s lengthy voyage continues. Her journey, despite its incessant hardships, is to lead to many new understandings of her previous privilege and its subsequent replacement by subjection and submission: power and powerlessness, in their various guises, engage in a compelling dialectic. Narrated in a particularly effective first person, present tense voice by Melkorka herself, this is a novel for those mature young readers who will not be upset by some gruelling episodes of psychological and physical cruelty or by its occasional moments of sexual frankness.