Blending historical chronicle, fiction, and commentary, The Forbidden Kingdom brings together the seemingly unrelated lives of a twentieth-century ship"s radio operator and the sixteenth-century Portuguese poet-in-exile Luis Camoes. Jacob Slauerhoff draws his reader into a dazzling world of exoticism, betrayal, and exile, where past and present merge and the possibility of death is never far away. Born in The Netherlands in 1898, upon graduating from university Jacob Slauerhoff signed up as a ship"s surgeon with the Dutch East India Company. He was at sea throughout his life, voyaging to the Far East, Latin America, and Africa.