Sapphira, beautiful and assured, tells in unblushing and sensuous detail of her journey through life, briefly as an innocent young girl in Tunisia, then as one of eleven slave girls in an Arabian sheikh''s harem, where her life changes utterly. Shamelessly, she reveals the sheikh''s secrets of exotic lovemaking, and writes down all in her journal, her every thought, fear, and pleasure, with pressing frankness.

There is much to learn before she is "called" to her Master. Eunuchs train and instruct her in every facet of the art of pleasing a man.

..."on one hand, I looked forward to knowing these things, yet on the other, I was aghast at the way I had to show myself and the distasteful things I might have to do. It thoroughly unnerved me to realize that I must know a man in these ways--a man I scarcely knew"...

Her description of life in the harem is compelling and moving, recalling a level of lustful debauchery, submission, and decadence unimaginable today, but completely believable in the era in which it is set...and we are like the "fly on the wall" to watch intriguing, romantic, and sometimes wretched events unfold.