“Perhaps I would never have chosen to write on Nefertari at all if I hadn’t taken a trip to Egypt and seen her magnificent tomb,” says Heretic Queen author Michelle Moran. “I gazed at the vibrant images on her tomb, jackals and bulls, cobras and gods. I knew that this wasn’t just any woman, but a woman who had been loved fiercely when she was alive.”

   Heretic Queen is the story of Egyptian queen Nefertari. Before becoming queen, she was branded a heretic because her aunt Nefertiti and uncle Akhenaten had replaced, while they were in power, the traditional gods of Egypt with just one god, Aton.

   “Because I am a sucker for romances, particularly if those romances actually happened, I immediately wanted to know more about Nefertari and her husband Ramesses the Great,” says Moran. “So my next stop was the Hall of Mummies at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. There, resting beneath a heavy arc of glass was the great Pharaoh himself. For a ninety-something year old man, he didn’t look too bad.”

    “I tried to imagine him as he’d been when he was young …strong, athletic, frighteningly rash and incredibly romantic,” says Moran. “Buildings and poetry remain today as testaments to Ramesses’ softer side, and in one of Ramesses more famous poems he calls Nefertari ‘the one for whom the sun shines’. His poetry to her can be found from Luxor to Abu Simbel. It was my visit to Abu Simbel, where Ramesses built a temple for Nefertari, that I finally decided that I had to tell their story.”

   “Nefertari was only one of two, or possibly three, queens ever deified in her lifetime,” says Moran. “In many ways, The Heretic Queen is a natural progression from my debut novel Nefertiti. The sequel picks up the plot after the brief interceding reign of Tutankhamun. The narrator is orphaned Nefertari, who suffers terribly because of her relationship to the [first] reviled ‘Heretic Queen’.

   Heretic Queen is a stand-alone sequel. There are references to what happened in Nefertiti, it’s by no means necessary to read the first book.

   Heretic Queen is the story of Nefertari, a queen best remembered in history for the love poems her husband wrote to her. The book is a love story, but it doesn’t come through strongly because it’s so intermixed with politics. Nefertari was invaluable at court because she spoke eight languages and could understand visitors from other countries.

   You’ll enjoy the book and feel as though you’re in ancient Egypt. Moran’s descriptions are vivid: the fragrances, the texture of the fabrics. If you’ve never been to Egypt it will make you want to go and see the tombs for yourself.  

   Michelle Moran  was born in the San Fernando Valley in California. Her family traveled extensively, and Moran spent a great deal of time in airports and on the road. She currently splits her time between California and France.

Heretic Queen Hardcover, 400 pages, Publisher: Crown, (September 16, 2008)