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Rapture
On sale
1st October 2024
Price: £20
‘Astonishing . . . a scorching vision of a book’ CHARLOTTE WOOD, bestselling author of The Weekend
The legend is only half the story…
Ninth-century Mainz, in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Agnes is the motherless child of an English priest – a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. But when tragedy strikes, she is suddenly forced to choose between what is expected of her and the life she has always dreamed of. Determined to find her own freedom, she disguises herself as a man, securing a place at the revered Fulda monastery and forever altering the course of her existence.
Thus begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of Fulda, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome.
There, she dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge of the old and new languages of Europe, theology and Church law, and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful – and deadly – currency.
And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known – and loved.
The legend is only half the story…
Ninth-century Mainz, in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Agnes is the motherless child of an English priest – a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. But when tragedy strikes, she is suddenly forced to choose between what is expected of her and the life she has always dreamed of. Determined to find her own freedom, she disguises herself as a man, securing a place at the revered Fulda monastery and forever altering the course of her existence.
Thus begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of Fulda, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome.
There, she dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge of the old and new languages of Europe, theology and Church law, and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful – and deadly – currency.
And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known – and loved.
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Reviews
PRAISE FOR EMILY MAGUIRE'S AN ISOLATED INCIDENT
Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize
'Superb writing and sense of place. Totally credible voices. Read her!'
Ann Cleeves
'This hugely chilling and evocative story, mixing lyrical language and brutal events, is told with great psychological acuity'
Anita Sethi
'Utterly engrossing . . . Rather than creating a simple case of goodies and baddies, Maguire subtly examines the complexity of the human personality and what leads somebody to feel destructive'
Sydney Morning Herald
Rapture is astonishing - a scorching vision of a book. Drawing on history, legend, speculation and gossip, Maguire's medieval girl-Pope story is made of many things: flesh and earth and blood; ambition and abnegation; rage and transcendence, all pouring into this pagan, biblical, strange and mighty work from an imagination in soaring flight