PearlyBooks

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Jim Crace's fifth novel is an ingenious retelling of the story of Jesus's fast in the wilderness - the title Quarantine literally means a period of forty days. In the Judean desert two thousand years ago, four pilgrims endure a 'quarantine' of forty days' fasting and prayer, for reasons described by the author as 'madness, cancer and sterility'. All of them seek salvation. Nearby, an evil merchant named Musa lies gravely ill in his tent, abandoned by all his relatives except his pregnant wife, Miri, who begins to dig his grave. He is close to death when a man named Jesus from Galilee arrives and heals him. Restored to health, Musa tricks the pilgrims into paying rent to say on 'his' land. He also plots to exploit Jesus's healing gift. Meanwhile, Jesus grows weaker and starts to hallucinate as his own fast continues.