Many Western people associate the harem with the Muslim world, but both the harem and the veil predate the birth of Islam by at least a thousand years. King Xerxes of Persia has banished Queen Vashti for her insubordination and sends his elite soldiers to scour the land for beautiful young virgins to fill his harem. Esther’s tale is the basis for the Jewish festival of Purim. Anita Diamant’s novel, The Red Tent, became such an iconic classic because she turned our stereotyped image of women in the Old Testament on its head by allowing the biblical Dinah to tell her own story in her own voice.ĭiamant’s worthy successor is Rebecca Kanner whose sweeping novel, Esther, has just been released in paperback.Įsther is a riveting portrait of the eponymous heroine of the biblical Book of Esther, itself a work of historical fiction, according to the Jewish Women’s Archive.

To uncover the buried histories of women, we must act as detectives, studying the clues left from ages lost.Īt its best, historical fiction can write women back into history and challenge our misconceptions about women in the past. Their lives and deeds have become lost to us. To a large extent, women have been written out of history. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father and the celebrated chronicle of my brother. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed into the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. We have been lost to each other for so long.

Esther by Rebecca Kanner