A Stolen Tongue
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“Part rollicking historical potboiler, part theological mystery” from the acclaimed author of The Dress Lodger and The Mammoth Cheese (Entertainment Weekly).
A riveting mystery that recalls the work of Umberto Eco and Barry Unsworth, A Stolen Tongue is the captivating debut novel that launched critically acclaimed author Sheri Holman’s literary career.
In 1483, Father Felix Fabri sails from Germany to Mount Sinai on a pilgrimage to venerate the relics of Saint Katherine of Alexandria. But at each of the shrines he visits throughout Greece and Palestine, he finds that the remains of Katherine’s body are being stolen piece by piece: her hand, her ear, and then her tongue vanish from their holy resting places. Desperate to discover the thief and save his saint from such appalling desecration, Felix is thrust into a strange mystery that takes him across the desert and plumbs the depths of his soul.
“Holman seduces you into a world of priests, rogues, saints, a world bright with horizon, wonder, piety. Her prose, tart, racy, and somber, will sing in your soul a long while.”—Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize-winning, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Angela’s Ashes
“Holman tells a fascinating story. From the opening scene in Crete to the harrowing finale in the Sinai desert, she knows how to create suspense.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Sheri Holman writes with extraordinary assurance and style.”—Miranda Seymour, author of Bugatti Queen
“The best historical thriller I have read since Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.”—Alain de Botton, author of The Course of Love
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Widely varied notions of faith and mission, from the conventional to the bizarre, color this intriguing historical thriller about a 15th-century pilgrimage from Germany to Mt. Sinai. The narrative takes the form of a journal kept by Dominican Father Felix Fabri, beginning at sea in 1483. Felix seeks to visit the relics of his spiritual wife, St. Katherine of Alexandria, on whom he has developed a fixation that might strike contemporary readers as not being entirely in keeping with his vows--though such eroticized spirituality was not uncommon at the time. As pieces of Katherine's body disappear from churches along his party's route, Felix faces a troubling mystery made more strange by the appearance of a young woman named Arsinoe, whose possibly mad communications with the saint have earned her the sobriquet, Tongue of St. Katherine. The pilgrims' voyage is arduous enough, but with the added intrigue of the disappearing relics, and conflicts that try Felix's faith and corrupt his judgment, they will be pushed to the brink of despair. First-novelist Holman pulls her readers along with odd riddles and careful suspense. As absorbing as is her portrayal of the premodern world is, her feel for timeless ironies is also sure: Felix decries the strange, unholy ways of the "Saracens" while he searches for his dead "wife," whose dried-out tongue he keeps in a pouch around his neck. While the plot's resolution is a bit unsatisfying, this is a strong debut, an often enthralling yarn that draws the reader right in among the pilgrims on their harrowing trek.
