Rome

Stories from Ancient Civilisations

by Shahrukh Husain, Bee Willey (Illustrator)

This series brings together captivating stories from ancient civilisations. The stories are simply told, whilst retaining the flavour of the original myths, and are illustrated by artists specially commissioned to portray key visual features from the culture the story originated in.

Genres: Mythology

Paperback

First published August 28, 2004

About the author

Born 28 April 1950, she is the daughter of Prince Ahmed Husain and Sabeeha (Ahmed) Husain. In 1979 Shahrukh Husain received her Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Shahrukh Husain has lectured extensively and has worked as a consultant on TV documentaries and in an advisory role to members of Parliament on cultural matters ranging from marriage and race to religion and language issues. Husain practises as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist specialising in transcultural work. Currently, she is working on an historical screenplay for Bend It Films and completing a series of mythology books for children. Husain resides in London.

Shahrukh Husain is best known for her works. Her adaptation of "In Custody" was Ismail Merchant's directorial debut and was nominated for Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1995.

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of the books in the series, this one is the most readable that I've read so far. In the other books (e.g., Greece, The Vikings), each story is given only a couple of pages. The characters never feel like characters and the plot is too sparse to feel like much of a story. In this book, the stories are developed over more pages which allows the characters to become recognizable as distinct personalities. My biggest complaint with the other books was that I couldn't imagine that such flat characters and sparse plots could maintain kids' attention. However in this book, Husain is much more successful on both fronts. I don't think they're exactly gripping stories as they're presented here, but they are at least stories.