A pacy and action-packed time-slip adventure
"A Message Through Time tells the story of a modern Australian girl and boy who slip through time to the Roman Empire and accidentally bring an ancient Roman girl into the present," Ciddor said.
Anna Ciddor has always done her own research as an author, creating books based on whatever historical period she fancied at the given time – Vikings, the Australian goldrush, pre-war Jewish Poland, ancient Ireland, or 1960s Melbourne.
When she decided to write about the ancient Roman Empire, she roped in her sister, Tamara Lewit, to help. Tamara has a PhD in Roman archaeology, and is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London.
Ciddor thought the research task would be a breeze for her. Turns out, it wasn’t.
“The kind of details I needed in order to wave my magic wand and bring the past to life required a lot more than the dry facts Tamara was used to working with,” Ciddor explained to The AJN.
“It wasn’t much use to me that she knew exactly what sort of screw press was used to make wine in 5th century Israel. I asked her questions like: ‘How hot was the water in a Roman bath? How did a mistress address a slave? What type of medicines did the Romans use?’ Luckily for me, when it comes to historical research, Tamara is an enthusiastic, incredible and meticulous detective.”
The pair collaborated on Ciddor’s historical novel, The Boy Who Stepped Through Time, and soon moved on to a stand-alone companion novel, A Message Through Time, which was published earlier this year.
The result is new, breakthrough areas of research for Lewit.
“A Message Through Time tells the story of a modern Australian girl and boy who slip through time to the Roman Empire and accidentally bring an ancient Roman girl into the present,” Ciddor said.
“To create adventures and culture clashes, I needed to understand the everyday life of children in Roman times – including slave children – and it turns out there are virtually no Roman written sources telling us about this in detail.”
Lewit though wasn’t fazed, burrowing for information including from ancient letters and poems, grave finds and images.
She discovered a number of striking facts during her research that Ciddor used in A Message Through Time.
For example, girls were married in their mid-teens, usually to men around 10 years older, but even to men of 40 or older. In the novel, the modern character Zoe is horrified when she finds out a betrothal is being planned for the Roman girl, Petronia, who is only 12 years old.
“[Also] women were often shopkeepers, but elite girls and women didn’t go shopping. In the novel when the Roman girl Petronia is brought into modern times she refuses to enter a shop because it wouldn’t be respectable,” Ciddor explained.
She said the inspiration behind the novel was simple and complex at the same time.
“Apart from wanting to bring the past alive for modern children, and for modern children to learn what life was like for girls in the past in a fun and engaging way, the other inspiration, and theme, for the novel, was the relationship between the two modern characters.
“Zoe and Felix are new step-siblings who initially resent being brought together in one family. This is an experience faced by many children nowadays, and the novel explores the way their relationship develops.”
A Message Through Time is published by Allen & Unwin, $17.99 rrp
comments