The Empress Emerald

Stolen: a child, an identity, and a priceless jewel

by J.G. Harlond.

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“Every once in a while, you come across a piece of literature that marks its territory in your heart – a brilliant work that is certain to stay with you a long time.” Indian Book Reviews

Abandoned as a child in a Bombay orphanage, Leo Kazan’s life takes an unanticipated turn when he becomes the protégé of Sir Lionel Pinecoffin, the city’s District Political Officer in Bombay. Under Pinecoffin’s tutelage, the boy, adept at learning languages and theft, is trained as a spy and becomes immersed in international espionage, revolutionary politics, and diamond smuggling. In 1918, during a visit to London, he has a brief but memorable affair with a young English woman Davina Dymond in London before leaving for Russia.

Separated, their lives take different turns. As he matures Leo begins to question his family history, seeking to uncover the truth about his parents. A pregnant Davina is married off and exiled to Spain, where she gives birth to Leo’s daughter. They are fated to meet again in Gibraltar in 1936, their love rekindled. But a new war plunges Europe into crisis, the Spanish Civil War tearing them apart, leaving, Leo and Davina in a fight to reclaim their lives and their love amid the violent storms of war.

A Word from the Author

Born in 1900, in Goa, India, the main character in this story is Leo Kazan, a direct descendent of Ludo da Portovenere of The Chosen Man trilogy. A gifted linguist and talented thief, Leo believes himself to be an orphan, but this is not the case. Leo becomes the protégé of a Bombay Political Officer of the Raj, who develops his skills and uses him as an ‘intelligencer’. Leo becomes involved in international espionage for the British, and diamond smuggling for his own benefit. After the daring theft of a jewel known as the Empress Emerald, Leo is sent to London, where he has a brief affair with the innocent, naïve Davina Dymond before leaving for an undercover mission in Revolutionary Russia. The affair leads to Davina (who is a descendent of the feisty Alina in The Chosen Man trilogy) being hastily married to a Spaniard and moving to Jerez. As the drums of war reverberate around the world for a second time in their lives, Leo begins to understand his history, and Davina turns to crime to survive. Both must unshackle themselves from the ways of the old world, and those who seek to manipulate them before they can find true happiness – and each other again.

Apart from telling a tale based on real events, the aim of this novel was to show how time and society shape young lives and how people re-invent themselves according to circumstances as adults, but how ultimately genetic inheritance will show through. Leo’s life story runs parallel to the Indian Home Movement, and Davina’s reflects the changing attitudes to women during the first half of the twentieth century. The book took many years to write and is consciously influenced by the author’s own experience of being a foreigner in a foreign land.

(J.G. Harlond, October 2018)