The Ostraka Plays: Volume FIVE - CONSTANTINOPLE, ITS DREAMS

Here, in Constantinople, a skinmaker hides an imperial map inside the folds of his own flesh, marionette-makers carve divine models based upon the newly dead, a senator is lured into a trap by assassin-mimes, a woman spends her days tearing herself out of all the books she can find, a map-maker draws maps only to entomb the living against their own falling sense of loneliness, an architect mocks the weight of the City and yearns to design it again as a mirror to the barbarians who always besiege it, a fading actress is condemned to act out her dying biography, and even in the endless Fall of the City, a wilful woman coerces the Turks who have finally broken in to heave the books away to a faint West and herald the Renaissance . . .