Synopsis
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021
'A dazzling piece of historical re-imagining and a revolutionary sermon, a furious denunciation of inequality' - The judges of the International Booker prize.
The fight for equality begins in the streets.
From the internationally bestselling author of The Order of the Day: Éric Vuillard once again takes us behind the scenes at a moment when history...
Details
06 January 2022
80 pages
9781529038552
Imprint: Picador
Reviews
This brief, ardent book, half-historical essay and half-revolutionary tract, mingles swift-moving tableaux from the preacher’s life and age with Vuillard’s pulpit homilies on oppression and resistance . . . its incendiary prose well served by Mark Polizzotti’s translation, has scenes of firecracker intensity.Financial Times
[A] compact, artful blend of history and fiction . . . in cinematic bursts of image and action . . . [Vuillard] never forces analogies with the present, but the uprisings he describes feel like part of a war destined to rage in any era beset by gross inequalities.New Yorker
It is very French and I mean that as a whole-hearted compliment . . . Set in a Europe of political division, sickness, disenfranchisement, poverty and simmering rebellion, it may be patterned on the gilets jaunes disruptions but is far more universal. The narrator is both aloof and humble; not willing to speculate about Müntzer’s motives, but desperate to understand him.Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday
A slender, vivid history of a 16th-century populist revolt that holds relevance for current times . . . A slim book in which every word is important, one that deserves to be read multiple times.Kirkus (starred review)