Quarantine - Jim Crace

In 'Quarantine', Jim Crace does nothing less than suggest a source for the myth (legend?) of Jesus! He takes us through the quarantine, or forty-day fast, of a small group of travellers in the Judean desert. They share their barren home with a vicious merchant and his wife. Musa, the merchant, preys on them as they begin their quarantine, and he becomes obsessed with the last of their group, a pious Galilean carpenter - Jesus. Crace's descriptive flights, taking in the harsh landscape, the physical trials, and the mental torments of the fast, are stunning. He approaches their impossible task with all the reason of the modern mind, yet he retains ...

Set nearly two thousand years ago, Crace's novel is virtuoso piece of writing. He evokes the ancient times, the scorched landscape, the fevered characters-all with such vigour and dazzle that it is not difficult to see why this novel won the 'Whitbread novel of the year' and was shortlisted for the Booker. It is the Judean desert and four travellers enter to fulfill a religious fast and pray for their lost souls. There they encounter the personification of evil- a crazed merchant called Musa- who holds them in his spell. What ensues is a battle for survival, made all the more difficult under the unforgiving sun, the blistering rocks and the swirling ...