Books in Signal Books series

First published in Hungary under the title Lathatatlan Ember in 1901. The narrator and hero of the novel is a young Byzantine freedman who falls in love with the daughter of a Hunnish nobleman and commits himself to slavery among the Huns in the hope of eventually marrying her. Set around the time of Attila, the novel includes dramatic accounts of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains between the Huns and the Romans, and of Attila's funeral.

Married as a child bride to a tenant farmer she had never met, Rukmani works side by side in the field with her husband to wrest a living from a land ravaged by droughts, monsoons, and insects. With remarkable fortitude and courage, she meets changing times and fights poverty and disaster. This beautiful and eloquent story tells of a simple peasant woman in a primitive village in India whose whole life is a gallant and persistent battle to care for those she loves—an unforgettable novel that “will wring your heart out” (Associated Press).