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Melissa Chinchillo
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THE NIGHT LANGUAGE

David Rocklin

Readers of literary historical novels will delight in Rocklin’s description of British royalty at the turn of the nineteenth century, and its explorations of identity and class relations.
Loosely based on the relationship between Queen Victoria and young Prince Alamayehu of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), THE NIGHT LANGUAGE tells the story Alamayou’s fostering by the Queen as an orphan of war to live at Windsor Castle, along with Philip Layard.

A young apprentice to a doctor on the battlefield in Abyssinia, Philip is deemed Alamayou’s guardian because he’s the only one who can communicate with him, through hand gestures. The two form a deep friendship, and through Philip’s and Alamayou's eyes, we see the internal workings of Windsor Castle, from the hierarchies within the servants’ quarters, to the interrelations between the staff and the royals, and most fascinating of all—how both the royalty and the staff deal with two young black men living under their historic roof for several months.

Accused by Parliament of having murdered his own mother and being a deviant, Alamayou is sentenced to be returned to Abyssinia, where he will be executed. The Queen and royals don’t believe he has committed such atrocities and struggle to find a way to clear his name and prevent his execution, to no avail…or so they think. But who was it who really boarded the ship to Abyssinia and was executed, as all the newspapers had reported? And what would happen if Parliament learned that Alaymayou was indeed alive for all these years, and their ruling had been circumvented?

David Rocklin is a business mediator at Rocklin Conflict Resolution and is appointed to the LA Superior Court ADR Panel. He was previously an attorney in the Enforcement Division of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, and he graduated from Chicago-Kent School of Law. He lives in California with his wife and two children and is at work on his next novel.
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Published 2017-11-01 by Rare Bird Books

Comments

The love story between Prince Alamayou and his steward, Philip, is one for the ages. A work of complex social and political relationships, through sexuality, race, class, love, and war as it brings the reader closer and closer to its The Night Language deftly navigates devastating conclusion. A stunning novel from a wonderful talent.

Based on true events, David Rocklin's sweeping second novel conveys the complex speech of bodies and art through beautiful prose. This story of a forbidden bond is compelling and tender, revealing the language of love that is often silent . . . (An) important novel . . . (A) heartbreaking and stirring portrait.

Lovely and complex. It opens slowly, folding in historical details with ease.

A moving and inspiring novel that shows what happens when those in power listen to foreign visitors...Rocklin does a beautiful job capturing the raw emotions that bring Alamayou and the queen closer together, all the while exploring the forbidden intimacy between him and Philip that permeates the novel.

A rare achievement: lush language and classic storytelling with a contemporary feel that renders its history palpable. It is also a love letter to the artist, the outcast, the othered. Keep it by your bedside, read it in the early hours?it will not fail to inspire you.

THE NIGHT LANGUAGE is a postcard sent from a lost time and place but postmarked today. As he surveys the crisscross borders of gender and race in a troubled past, David Rocklin draws a line around the heart of our troubled present: the price of war, the privilege of wealth, the poison of xenophobia. Also: the wordless power of love. The shadows of two black men, an African prince and a British apprentice, dance together out of a forgotten history right into the here and now.

A beautifully written and touching love story of interest to all adult readers, particularly (but not exclusively) those interested in minority rights and British history.

Not since Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient have I read a novel in which a character—The story of Alamayou-- haunted language, history, and heart so intensely. David Rocklin's novel The Night Language is a book of longing. Longing for history to unravel and retell itself around those whose buried voices and bodies truly mattered, longing for time to reverse and make decolonization possible, power giving way to intimacy, longing for art to bring a body back home, longing for language to unmoor itself and bring us back to life. If you read one novel this year, let it be The Night Language. It is still possible for a reader’s heart to be broken back open.