Rosetta: A Scandalous True Story
This is the extraordinary tale of the author’s Jewish great-grandmother, Rosetta Raphael, who caused a major scandal in early 1900s Melbourne by divorcing her husband and abandoning her daughter for the charismatic Carl Zeno, a fortune-teller of Chinese heritage.
Banished from respectable society, the couple operates in Sydney’s “Palace of Illusions” before sailing to Europe where they reinvent themselves as a Japanese professor and his American wife. Through connections forged by Rosetta earlier in life with the aristocratic Lilian Pakenham and beautician Helena Rubinstein, the couple gains access to the rich and powerful. Carl establishes a reputation for improving health and well-being using a combination of radium and aroma therapies, hypnotism and mysticism. His most enthusiastic devotees include Princess Charlotte, sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Empress Eugenie, widow of Napoleon III.
Just like Rosetta herself, the book is audacious and flamboyant and breaks all the rules. It darts in and out of the past and the present, veers between historical fact, the author’s memoirs and romantic fiction of an unashamedly purple variety yet remains compelling throughout. The closing chapters explore the lingering effects of family fracture on subsequent generations. A terrific read and highly recommended.
