Alison Buckley
Queen Vashti etched her name into ancient Iranian history when she defied her husband the King’s order to appear before his guests as a beautiful ’show’ wife. Angered by her disrespectfor his authority, the King banished her from his presence under the laws of the Medes and Persians. In the Hebrew account, a foreign captive is chosen as her replacement queen but littleor nothing more is heard of Vashti, though her stance to refuse to be humiliated in this way has set her as model of women’s true status ever since.It has been acknowledged that the Medes were ancestors of today’s Kurds. At their greatest extent, the Medes’ territories covered much of the regions of today’s Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkeycontinuously inhabited and claimed by Kurds as their ethnic homeland, which they call Kurdistan.This work of historical fiction tells part of the Medes’ story according to Queen Vashti. Well researched culturally and historically, informed by the author’s own interest and love for theKurdish and Iranian peoples, the story vividly captures the essence of life as it was for an voung heiress growing up in the midst of dynastic, political and military intrigue, until she becomesa major player herself, a leader and warrior in her own right. If Vashti was a Mede, she stands in the tradition of Kurdish women who still struggle to protect their gender andancient lands.
