Pauline Gedge - House of Dreams

Praise for Pauline Gedge

Gedge excels at setting the scene and subtly evoking a sense of the period as she tells a timeless story of greed, love, and revenge.

Kirkus Reviews

Gedge makes the past so accessible. You can imagine walking between the pillars into a magnificent hall and watching it come alive with the smell of the fresh paint on the frescoes.

The Globe and Mail

Gedge vividly renders the exotic, sensuous world of ancient Memphis, the domestic rituals of bathing and dressing, the social ambience of superstition and spells.

Publishers Weekly

Gedge has such a terrific feel for ancient Egypt that the reader merrily suspends disbelief and hangs on for the ride.

Calgary Herald

Her richly colourful descriptions hit the reader with photographic clarity.

The Ottawa Sun

Gedge has brought Egypt alive, not just the dry and sandy Egypt we know from archaeology, but the day-to-day workings of what was one of the greatest and most beautiful kingdoms in the history of the world.

Quill & Quire

Each volume is a carefully devised segment, with its own distinct flavour and texture. When put together, then the skill and workmanship of the whole undertaking stand out clearly. The trilogy is one of Pauline Gedges most appealing works.

Edmonton Journal

Gedge has the magical ability to earn a readers suspension of disbelief.

Toronto Star

Pauline Gedges strengthsimagination, ingenuity in plotting, and convincing characterizationare here in abundance.

Books in Canada

Gedge draws another vivid picture of Ancient Egypt and skillfully weaves her dramatic tale of intrigue, treachery, and manipulation. Her historical novels have the ability to bring a period fully before us; it is possible to feel the heat and experience the pageantry she so ably describes.

The Shuswap Sun

Pauline Gedges knowledge of Egyptian history is both extensive and intimate, and has enabled her to produce an entire society of the time of Ramses II with admirable vitality. She has a sharp eye for the salient detail, and an evocative way with landscape and interiors. She can produce a mood and suggest an atmosphere A very good story well told, and it engrosses the reader from the first page to the last.

The Globe and Mail

PENGUIN CANADA

HOUSE OF DREAMS

PAULINE GEDGE is the award-winning and bestselling author of eleven previous novels, eight of which are inspired by Egyptian history. Her first, Child of the Morning , won the Alberta Search-for-a-New Novelist Competition. In France, her second novel, The Eagle and the Raven , received the Jean Boujassy award from the Socit des Gens des Lettres, and The Twelfth Transforming , the second of her Egyptian novels, won the Writers Guild of Alberta Best Novel of the Year Award. Her books have sold more than 250,000 copies in Canada alone; worldwide, they have sold more than six million copies and have been translated into eighteen languages. Pauline Gedge lives in Alberta.

ALSO BY PAULINE GEDGE

Child of the Morning

The Eagle and the Raven

Stargate

The Twelfth Transforming

Scroll of Saqqara

The Covenant

House of Illusions

The Hippopotamus Marsh:

Lords of the Two Lands, Volume One

The Oasis: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Two

The Horus Road: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Three

The Twice Born

HOUSE OF

DREAMS

PAULINE

GEDGE

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in a Viking Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1994

Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2002

Published in this edition, 2007

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)

Copyright Pauline Gedge, 1994

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publishers note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Gedge, Pauline, 1945

House of dreams / Pauline Gedge.

Originally publ.: Toronto : Viking, 2007.

ISBN 978-0-14-316742-6

1. Title.

PS8563.E33H68 2007 C813.54 C2007-903366-0

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ISBN-13: 978-0-14-316742-6

ISBN-10: 0-14-316742-1

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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HOUSE OF

DREAMS

MY FATHER WAS A MERCENARY , a blond, blue-eyed giant of a man who had drifted into Egypt during the time of the troubles when the Syrian Chancellor Irsu held sway and foreigners ranged where they would, looting and raping. For a time he lingered in the Delta, taking work where he could, for he was not himself lawless and would have nothing to do with the bands of wandering predators. He herded cattle, trod grapes, sweated in the mud pits where bricks were made. Then, when our Great God Ramses father, Osiris Setnakht Glorified, wrested power from the filthy Syrian, my father saw his chance and joined the ranks of the infantry, marching through the towns and villages scattered along the length of the Nile, routing and pursuing the disorganized groups of pillagers, executing, and arresting, and played his part in the restoration of a Maat that had been enfeebled and almost eclipsed by the febrile creatures who had grappled for the throne of Egypt for years, none of whom were worthy to be called the Incarnation of the God.

Sometimes the drunken vermin my fathers troop exterminated were Libu from his own Tamahu tribe, similarly fair-haired and light of eye, who had come to the Two Lands not to enrich it nor to build an honest life but to steal and kill. They were like rogue animals, and my father destroyed them without compunction.

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