On the coast of southern Spain, an English father sits waiting for his son. It is many years since Benedict, then still a child, set out with the famous scholar Antioch on a mission to find and collect the mysterious beasts of the East. In all those years there has been no word, and the expedition is assumed lost. But the boy's father is not the only person asking questions on the harbourside that summer, and as he learns more about his son's companions, he comes to realise that the fate of the expedition has implications for people far richer and more powerful than himself. The Unicorn Road tells of a journey into the unknown and of the secret motives and hidden passions of those it brings together. When Benedict is befriended by the interpreter, Venn, he becomes embroiled in an exotic, dangerous adventure. It is a story of love and honour, greed and cruelty and, ultimately, about the power of words themselves. As magically evocative as an ancient silk painting, The Unicorn Road is a novel of the medieval world which vividly and tenderly illuminates our own.
Martin Davies grew up in North West England. All his writing is done in cafes, on buses or on tube trains, and an aversion to laptops means that he always works in longhand. He has travelled widely, including in the Middle East and India, and substantial parts of THE UNICORN ROAD were written while travelling through Sicily. He works as a consultant in the broadcasting industry.
Translation rights in Martin's books have now been sold in Germany, Sweden, Poland, France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Korea, Russia, Serbia, Turkey and Holland.