Awards
Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year 1999
Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year and a Booker finalist: a controversial novel of faith and mystery about a group of desert travellers and their encounter with JesusQuarantine is Jim Crace's imaginative and powerful retelling of Christ's fabled 40-day fast in the desert. In Crace's account, Jesus travels to a cluster of arid caves where he crosses paths with a small group of exiles who are on a pilgrimage to find redemption. One wealthy and manipulative quarantiner recognizes characteristics in Christ that he believes are divine. Evoking the strangeness and beauty of the desert landscape, Crace provocatively interprets one of our most important stories.
Review
"Stunning...Crace is a writer of hallucinatory skill." John Updike, The New Yorker
Review
"Sure to please some readers, though the audience is bound to be small." Library Journal
Review
Not just solid but engaging. The allegory may be either magical or ironic...but never portentous or grandiloquent. There is wit and meat in every detail." The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review
Review
"A flawlessly presented tale...that opens a window on human aspiration and folly, its revelations full of grit and glory." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"This novel is a high-wire act, a tour de force, a garment expertly tailored from materials of the highest quality." The Washington Post Book World
Synopsis
A controversial novel of faith and mystery about a group of desert travellers and their encounter with Jesus.
Quarantine is Jim Crace's imaginative and powerful retelling of Christ's fabled 40-day fast in the desert. In Crace's account, Jesus travels to a cluster of arid caves where he crosses paths with a small group of exiles who are on a pilgrimage to find redemption. One wealthy and manipulative quarantiner recognizes characteristics in Christ that he believes are divine. Evoking the strangeness and beauty of the desert landscape, Crace provocatively interprets one of our most important stories.
Synopsis
Quarantine is an imaginative and powerful retelling of Christ's fabled forty-day fast in the desert. In Jim Crace's account, Jesus travels to a cluster of arid caves, where he crosses paths with a small group of exiles and changes their lives in unexpected ways. Evoking the strangeness and beauty of the desert landscape, Crace provocatively interprets one of our most important stories.
About the Author
Jim Crace is the author of
Continent,
The Gift of Stones,
Arcadia,
Signals of Distress,
Being Dead, and most recently
The Devil's Larder. He has won the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the E. M. Forster Award, and the GAP International Prize for Literature. His novels have been translated into fourteen languages. He lives in Birmingham, England, with his wife and two children.
Exclusive Essay
Read an exclusive essay by Jim Crace