When I married my husband, Abdellatif, in a Berber village in Morocco in 2005, I had no idea that his ancestry lay far to the south of Morocco, through Mauretania and into the depths of the Sahara Desert, among the nomadic Berbers of that region, known as the Tuareg. On our travels, in a village in the Atlas Mountains, I came upon a tiny shop selling all sorts of dusty items and found this extraordinary necklace:
Abdel bought it for me. “It’s a tcherot,” he told me. “A Tuareg amulet. Our people wear them for protection against bad luck and djinns. They open the amulet and insert prayers and binding spells written in our lost language.”
“A lost language?” I was utterly intrigued.
The Berber language, it turns out, had been suppressed ever since the coming of the Romans and then the Arabs from the east. It had survived as an oral language throughout the remote rural areas of Morocco. Abdel spoke it as his first language, but had never learned to write it. The only people who saved it as a written language were the nomads of the desert, the Tuareg – the veiled ‘blue men’ and their wives and daughters, made spells and verses to keep their men safe as they trekked their camels across the salt roads of the Sahara.
Magical amulets, a lost language, binding spells to keep love safe? How could a novelist resist?
Jane Johnson is a British novelist and publisher. Her novels include Court of Lions, The Tenth Gift, The Salt Road and The Sultan's Wife. She is the UK editor for George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb and Dean Koontz and was for many years publisher of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Married to a Berber chef she met while researching The Tenth Gift, she lives in Cornwall and Morocco.
You can find out more about Jane's work here, and discover Abdel's beautiful Berber and Tuareg jewellery here. 
One house, two women, a lifetime of secrets...
Following the death of her mother, Becky begins the sad task of sorting through her empty flat. Starting with the letters piling up on the doormat, she finds an envelope post-marked from Cornwall. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. A desperate plea from her mother's elderly cousin, Olivia, to help save her beloved home.
Becky arrives at Chynalls to find the beautiful old house crumbling into the ground, and Olivia stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her home is made habitable.
Though daunted by the enormity of the task, Becky sets to work. But as she peels back the layers of paint, plaster and grime, she uncovers secrets buried for more than seventy years. Secrets from a time when Olivia was young, the Second World War was raging, and danger and romance lurked round every corner...
The Sea Gate is a sweeping, spellbinding novel about the lives of two very different women, and the secrets that bind them together.
'A beautifully written and intriguing story that stayed with me long after I had turned the last page' Santa Montefiore.
'I wanted to live in this story. Jane Johnson writes with such grace and ease' Carol Drinkwater.
'I was completely swept up in this ... Quite magical' Rachel Hore.
The Sea Gate is out now, and The Salt Road is newly published this month:
