Hottentot Venus

It is Paris, 1815. An extraordinarily shaped South African girl known as the Hottentot Venus, dressed only in feathers and beads, swings from a crystal chandelier in the duchess of Berry's ballroom. Below her, the audience shouts insults and pornographic obscenities. Among these spectators is Napoleon's physician and the most famous naturalist in Europe, the Baron George Cuvier, whose encounter with her will inspire a theory of race that will change European science forever. Evoking the grand tradition of such "monster" tales asFrankensteinandThe Hunchback of Notre Dame, Barbara Chase Riboud, prize-winning author of the classicSally Hemings,again gives voice to an "invisible" of history. In this powerful saga, Sarah Baartman, for more than 200 years known only as the mysterious lady in the glass cage, comes vividly and unforgettably to life.

<p><b>BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD</b> is a Carl Sandberg Prize–winning poet and the prizewinning author of four acclaimed, widely translated historical novels, the bestselling <i>Sally Hemings</i>, <i>Valide: A Novel of a Harem, Echo of Lions </i>(about the <i>Amistad</i> mutiny), and <i>The President’s Daughter, </i>a prequel to <i>Sally Hemings</i>. She is a winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and received a knighthood in arts and letters from the French government in 1996. Chase-Riboud is also a renowned sculptor whose award-winning monuments grace Lower Manhattan. She is the rare living artist honored with a personal exhibition, “The Monument Drawings,” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Born and raised in Philadelphia of Canadian American descent, she was educat