SONG OF ANCIENT LOVERS

Ancient biblical kingdoms meet refugee camps in modern-day Yemen in a re-envisioning of the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

This novel by Colombian writer Restrepo reimagines the biblical love affair through the lens of the queen’s childhood and upbringing, weaving it into the stories of modern exiles in refugee settlements in Yemen. The queen, born as the eldest daughter of the kingdom of Sheba and nicknamed Goat Foot because of her furred body and goatlike foot, was cast out by her mother and lives on the edge of society and, as a result of her liminal existence, “embraced multiplicity and renounced nothing, in a splendid mix of animal and human, dirty and clean, living and dead, past and future, white and black.” Running alongside and interwoven with the story of Goat Foot is the contemporary story of the failed monk Bos Mutas, whose fascination with the Queen of Sheba begins as a boy when his parents take him on a cruise down the Nile and he encounters her belly dancing on the ship’s main stage. After his father abandons him and his mother dies, Bos Mutas trains to be a Dominican monk but finds himself unable to pray to the Christian god and instead becomes more intensely obsessed with the Queen of Sheba. His obsession eventually leads to his expulsion from the novitiate, and his search for the elusive queen takes him to Yemen, where he meets Zahra Bayda, a Somali midwife with Doctors Without Borders, whom he follows into refugee settlements. He watches her work among the migrants, many of whom claim to be descendants of the Queen of Sheba. Restrepo’s gift for description and worldbuilding is impressive, as is her astonishing breadth of allusions ranging from Patti Smith to Thomas Aquinas. However, in some instances, the same richness that lends the story vitality buries some of the characters’ most compelling moments beneath overly ornate language as they struggle for love, acceptance, and survival amid the horrors of war, otherness, and exile.

A vibrant and occasionally florid reimagining of an ancient love story for modern times.