Book description
Who was Robin Hood? Romantic legend casts him as outlaw, archer, and
hero of the people, living in Sherwood Forest with Friar Tuck, Little
John and Maid Marian, stealing from the rich to give to the poor - but
there is no historical proof to back this up. The early ballads
portray a quite different figure: impulsive, violent, vengeful, with
no concern for the needy, no merry band, and no Maid Marian.
Hodd provides a possible answer to this famous question, in
the form of a medieval document rescued from a ruined church on the
Somme, and translated from the original Latin. The testimony of an
anonymous monk, it describes his time as a boy in the greenwood with a
half-crazed bandit called Robert Hodd - who, following the
thirteenth-century principles of the 'heresy of the Free Spirit',
believes himself above God and beyond sin. Hodd and his crimes would
have been forgotten without the boy's minstrel skills, and it is the
old monk's cruel fate to know that not only has he given himself up to
apostasy and shame, but that his ballads were responsible for turning
a murderous felon into the most popular outlaw hero and folk legend of
England, Robin Hood.
Written with his characteristic depth and subtlety, his sure
understanding of folklore, his precise command of detail, Adam
Thorpe's ninth novel is both a thrilling re-examination of myth and a
moving reminder of how human innocence and frailty fix and harden into history.
Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956. His first novel,
Ulverton
, was published in 1992, and he has written nine others - most recently
Flight
- two collections of stories and five books of poetry. His new
translation of
Madame Bovary
has just been published by Vintage. He lives in France with his wife
and family.
