The novel that invented the female villain. A young Englishman named Leo Vincey receives a letter on his twenty-fifth birthday revealing a family secret: his bloodline traces back to an ancient Greek who was murdered by a priestess who then became immortal. She has ruled a hidden African kingdom for two millennia, waiting for his return. What follows is one of literature's great dark romances. Leo journeys into the heart of Africa to find She-who-must-be-obeyed, a beautiful and terrifying queen who has spent centuries suspended between godhood and madness, longing for the descendant of her murdered lover. But immortality has twisted her into something neither human nor divine. This is a Victorian adventure novel that asks what eternal life does to love, what absolute power does to the soul, and whether some wounds can only be healed by the blood of generations yet unborn. Haggard created an archetype that echoes through every eternal feminine trope that followed.
