Book description
‘Dazzling, gritty brilliance. This is a novel of scorching distinction’
Sunday Times
Under an endless and unforgiving sky, four travellers enter the Judean
desert in search of redemption. Instead, amidst the barren rocks, they
are met by a dangerous man, Musa, and fall under his dark influence. But
there is a fervent, solitary figure also sharing their landscape,
denying the temptations of his neighbours, and, ultimately, the needs of
his own body. So begin forty days and nights in one of the most
inhospitable terrains on earth.
‘One of the finest novels I’ve read in years’ The Times
‘Completely captivating’ Literary Review
‘An intense and graceful novel. Crace’s desert shimmers with a sense of
the miraculous’ Express on Sunday
‘Stunning. A writer of hallucinatory skill’ John Updike Jim Crace has
enjoyed great success in both Britain and United States and his work is
widely translated. He is the prize-winning author of nine previous
books, including Continent
(winner of the 1986 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian
Fiction Prize), Quarantine
(winner of the 1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the
Booker Prize) and Being Dead
(winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award). He lives in
Birmingham.
