Patricia Marsh - author of The Scribe of the Soul
The Scribe of the Soul is a powerful, well-paced and meticulously researched novel. It brings to life a woman called Herpyllis, who only receives a brief mention in history in Aristotle's will, but who has intrigued the author, Patricia Marsh, for some time.
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Patricia is a linguist who worked abroad for several years, lecturing in English at the University of Skopje in the Republic of Macedonia, then part of Yugoslavia, for a long period before returning to the UK with her family during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. She has lived in Kent ever since, teaching and becoming Director of Studies and Heritage Activities for The English Cultural Experience. She now devotes her time to writing, as she always wished.
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Patricia's first work was non-fiction: The Enigma of the Margate Shell Grotto - an examination of the theories on its origins ISBN 978-0-9569437-2-9, a book now in its third edition http://www.martyrsfieldpublications.co.uk/. She has had a lifelong passion for historical research and archaeology.
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Alexander the Great of Macedon was the first topic ever covered in Patricia’s history classes at primary and secondary schools. She always found him fascinating. When she went to work in Macedonia with the British Council in 1974, one of her first questions was about the famous conqueror. “Oh no,” she was told, “he’s got nothing to do with us. We’re Slavs.” After the Republic became a state in its own right, this position changed out of all recognition. Today there is a colossal statue of Alexander on his warhorse towering over the main square in the capital Skopje.
After the experience of the Yugoslav wars and the atrocities committed in that period, Patricia came to reconsider her cherished Alexander. Why don’t we apply to him the same censure and recrimination, she wondered, as we do to the war criminals of the 1990s and to Hitler and the Nazis? Patricia decided to look at him again from the point of view of a woman, the eternal victim of men’s war games.
Moreover, she needed a setting to explore the ancient Mother Goddess religions, the remnants of a matriarchal system lost in prehistoric time. This is a tantalising subject for many women. Patricia's invention of ceremonies associated with the cult of the Mother Goddess is based on her own experience of a wedding many years ago in the Republic of Macedonia. After the wedding night, the bride’s female relatives and friends sent all the men out of the house and celebrated together drinking topla rakia. This is made by heating sugar until it caramelises and adding clear grape brandy. The resulting hot red liquid represents the blood shed by the virgin bride on consummation of her marriage, displayed for all to see on the bed sheets. There were a large number of ‘dirty’ jokes told as the evening went on and much cavorting by women waving carrots, both of which she was informed were age-old rituals.
Patricia was also interested in finding out more about Aristotle, the man behind the renowned philosopher, and his unhappy fate as an exile hounded out of the city he loved and had made his home, a fate similar to her own.
The Scribe of the Soul has emerged from these three passions. It is based on detailed research and making credible connections between the thin wisps of history which have come down to us from the 4th century BCE. Patricia has made the people whose names we know so well − and some who are more obscure − come alive and tell us a moving tale of human beings not unlike ourselves.
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To buy the book, go to http://theconradpress.com/product/the-scribe-of-the-soul/
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