Sea of Lentils

More than five hundred years on from Columbus's first voyage to America, this novel re-creates the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean in four interwoven narratives: one explores the ambitions and disappointments of Philip the Second as he lies on his death-bed; another the clandestine origins of the slave trade in the activities of the English merchant-venturer John Hawkins; a third describes the extermination of the French Huguenot colony in Florida - all complemented by the story of a common soldier accompanying Columbus on his second voyage.