The arid wilderness of colonial South Africa is the setting for this saga of love and ambition; the duel between two formidable men for control of the legendary Kimberley diamond fields at the turn of the century. Young Barney Barnato had nothing to lose when he abandoned his squalid existence in London’s East End and set out for the Dark Continent to make his fortune. He built an empire and became a threat to the ruthless Cecil Rhodes, who scorned the pauper-turned-tycoon and tried at every turn to destroy him. But the ghetto Jew proved to be more than a match for the snobbish Rhodes, who had bought himself a title and craved total control of the diamond trade, where millions were made and lost overnight. Barnato’s struggle, which took him from unbearable poverty to unimagined riches, from loveless slums to the loving arms of a beautiful woman, always stalked by the malevolent Rhodes, makes for a riveting novel blending history with fiction in the frontier days of nineteenth-century empire building