Reading guide for Seraglio by Janet Wallach     By Janet Wallach
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Excerpt  Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain
spoilers!  About This Book In 1788, Aimée de Buc de Rivery,
13-year-old Creole daughter of a prominent family in Martinique,
was returning from convent school in France when her ship was
captured by pirates. She was sold to a slave trader in Tunis
who, in turn, sold her to the household of the Ottoman Sultan in
Constantinople, where she was initiated into his seraglio. The
seraglio was a place of astonishing, disorienting weirdness: The
several hundred women there led lives of unfathomable luxury and
ease in what was essentially a prison. Forbidden to venture
beyond the palace walls, watched day and night by court eunuchs,
and denied even the rudiments of education, the women filled
their days by bathing, receiving instruction (from the eunuchs)
in every imaginable sexual technique, and gossiping. The sultan
could not p