Bodmin, 1349
An Epic Novel of Christians and Jews in the Plague Years
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- 0,99 €
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- 0,99 €
Publisher Description
"... an amazing work" -- Cynthia Ozick
"Bodmin, 1349 is a masterful work. Language here is a powerful and highly original cognitive instrument, surpassing Eco's The Name of the Rose." -- Mario Materassi
Here is history with human faces in the characters of Will, a peasant from York, and his wife, Miriam, rumored to be Jewish, a "leftover" from the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, who becomes a picaresque heroine through whom the events for the Black Death on the continent are told. The novel is passionate and witty as it interweaves existing documents from the times, charters and chronicles, monastic life and town life, the rectory and the brothel, with fantasy, vision, and lyricism. It is a compelling work of the religious and historical imagination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her lively historical novel, the author of Justice, My Brother and Solomon's Wisdom examines life in the Black Death years, 1260-1349. The first half of the story follows Will, a York peasant who flees an apparently happy marriage for a monastery after discovering that his wife, Miriam, may be Jewish. The second part accompanies Miriam as she wanders through England and the continent, searching for her true lineage. Kalechofsky limns a realistic portrait of the lives of Christian peasants (heavily taxed and tithed, they are forced into serfdom by intense poverty to be serfs bound to the land), monks (their powerful position, and less-than-holy methods of making money and their rituals) and Jews (their indispensable but unsavory position as moneylenders, their brutal persecution by individual Christians and the European feudal governments), as well as the devastating yet equalizing effect of the Black Plague on the various groups. The skillful novel is grounded in well-documented data and provides a fascinating glimpse of the rich religious heritage of both Christians and Jews.
