Two thousand years ago four travellers enter the Judean desert to fast and pray for their lost souls. In the blistering heat and barren rocks they encounter the evil merchant Musa, who holds them in his tyrannical power. Yet there is also another, afaint figure in the distance, fasting for forty days, a Galilean who they say has the power to work miracles ...

Accolades

Winner of Whitbread Book Awards: Novel Category 1997.
Winner of Whitbread Prize (Novel) 1997.
Shortlisted for Booker Prize for Fiction 1997.

Author Biography

Jim Crace is the author of CONTINENT, THE GIFT OF STONES, ARCADIA and SIGNALS OF DISTRESS. He has won the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the E.M. Forster Award, the Guardian Fiction Prize and the GAP International Prize for Literature. He lives in Moseley, Birmingham, with his wife and two children.