Quarantine

Written long before quarantines became so fashionable, Jesus in Jim Crace’s novel is an almost peripheral player, because– set during Christ’s forty days in the wilderness – six other people share in the inhospitable desert caves, miracles, and hallucinations. Each character has their own troubles and trials; their own battles with demons to resolve; which they hope isolation and fasting will accomplish. And for each, in ingenious ways, it does… I am a big fan of Crace’s style, rhythm, and invention, and this is one of his finest works.

Again, many might not call this a historical novel, but doesn’t all literature ask us to test the limits of our imagination? In Quarantine, Jim Crace takes us to the deserts of Judea, where the young Galilean rabbi Jesus is testing his spiritual faith by spending 40 days fasting in a cliff-top cave. The Bible tells us that the Devil came to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, but in Quarantine the temptations come mostly from his inadvertent travelling companions, in particular the venal, brutal trader Musa. Still, the powers of prayer and meditation, and the potential for some sort… show more.