Aphrodite’s isle: a baltasar albueno historical

It is the summer of 1505. All Europe is envious of the upstart Portuguese who have broken into the lucrative eastern spice trade with daring sea voyages around Africa to India. With better ships, guns, and ruthless tactics, they have managed to obtain a foothold in a market dominated for centuries by Muslim traders and Venetian middle men. The Ottoman Turks hear the cries for help from their fellow Muslims in Egypt, Arabia and the Malabar Coast of India. They see opportunity for larger empire and trade, as well as the prestige of being the protector of the holy cities of Islam.Baltasar and his wife and business partner, Sheba of Tigre, are living settled and productive lives in a resurgent post-war Naples. It all comes to an abrupt end with an act of betrayal leading to their abduction in the Bay of Naples by Barbary pirates. They embark on a harrowing new life of improvisation and survival in the great North African city of Tunis, serving the interests of slave traders, the pirate community, and their financial backers. They make their escape through the Libyan Desert to Sheba?s birthplace, the troubled city of Alexandria in Egypt, and from there to Aphrodite?s Isle, the Venetian-ruled Island of Cyprus. On Cyprus their stubborn resistance to what appears to be a preordained fate continues against the background of an improbable Turkish-Venetian-Egyptian alliance against the Portuguese interlopers in the Indian Ocean, and the warring factions of the unhappy island-birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love.?Travel, romance, adventure and excitement?yes, but beneath the surface the darker currents of the human condition tug and pull in contrary and unexpected directions.??Here is a Baltasar we have not seen before: a mature, self-confident family man, blind-sided by external events, his life spinning out of control. In the struggle to recover and maintain his self-respect and humanity he learns a few hard truths about himself and those he would love.??Read purely as history, the story of the Turkish-Venetian-Egyptian military alliance against the Portuguese in India is a fascinating insight into the earliest attempts at global empire building in which messianic religion, scientific thinking, and nascent capitalism jostle for primacy.?