Dancing with Carmen

About the Book

Loosely based on Bizet’s opera, “Carmen”, the novel deals with the mysticism of love and the subversion of sexual identity. It unfolds through the eyes of the opera’s secondary female character, Michaela. Now settled in Britain, she recalls her youth spent in a Latin American oligarchy facing social and political unrest.

 Michaela is the artist daughter of one of the country’s ruling families. She meets Jose,  an enforced conscript, whose family work on a sugar plantation owned by one of the US-backed multi-national companies. A fugitive from the army, Jose is rescued and hidden by Michaela and as their relationship unfolds he opens her eyes to the local poverty invisible to her privileged family and friends.

 Despite his love for Michaela, Jose is conflicted by the moral issues posed by their different lives. But destiny throws the couple another dangerous card -  in the shape of Carmen herself. 

 The conflict between the lovers, which represents the deeper conflicts between passion and possession, between poverty and privilege, takes place against the background of looming civil war.

About the Author

Gloria Tessler is the author of a biography, “Amelie, the story of Lady Jakobovits, published by Vallentine Mitchell in 1999. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in national magazines and anthologies, such as “Poetry Now!” and “A Woman’s Place”.

As a journalist she has written for national daily and Sunday newspapers, and worked as an editor and staff writer on the “Jewish Chronicle.” She is currently arts correspondent for a monthly refugee journal. Her play, “The Windmill,” based on the life of the Holocaust artist and poet, Peter Kien, had a three week run on the London fringe and her second “Unveiling Hagar” is in the pipeline. This is her first published novel. She is working on her next.

Gloria lives in London and has two daughters and a son.