A Bride's Story by Kaoru Mori

Because I watch a lot of Doctor Who, I’ve often wondered when and where I’d choose to go if I had access to a spaceship that could travel through time and space. Ancient Egypt? Florence during the height of the Italian Renaissance? Victorian England? 1920s Paris? Nineteenth-century central Asia, however, is a time and place I had not really considered.

Luckily for me, manga artist Kaoru Mori has been fascinated with the Silk Road since childhood. Her manga A Bride’s Story takes place in a nineteenth-century provincial town on the Caspian Sea, most likely in either Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan on modern maps. Her striking, incredibly detailed artwork and the compelling story make this unusual manga an absolute delight to read.

20-year-old Amir, who grew up in a nomadic tribe, gets a bit of a shock when she marries into a settled provincial family: the groom, Karluk, is only 12! The manga mostly focuses on her day-to-day life in her new home and she develops relationships with her young spouse, his extended family, and the English anthropologist, Mr. Smith, who lives with them. Although her new life is fairly comfortable, politics from Amir’s old life have followed her and may now threaten Karluk’s family as well.

Part slice-of-life manga, part historical fiction, A Bride’s Story is mostly a bunch of familiar anecdotes that illustrate everyday life in Amir’s time and place. Readers learn how a house it built, how bread is baked, and how clothes are made, and they see what it’s like to sleep in a yurt or bathe in a bath house. These details never feel forced or didactic, partly because they’re viewed through the eyes of children or outsiders. A hint of tension in Vol. 1 escalates to violence in Vol. 2. More battles and intrigue are clearly on the horizon for Vol. 3.

A Bride’s Story’s greatest strength is the artwork. The clothing, architecture, and landscape are exquisitely drawn. Mori takes great care with the details of embroidery and carved wood. The slow pace and quiet tone, however, might not draw in fans of action-heavy shonen or funny, romantic shojo. This is a manga for anyone who appreciates beautiful art or enjoys learning about often-overlooked places and time periods. I love it and hope you’ll give it a try, too!