The Leper's Companions

by JuliaBlackburn (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2000

  $18.03

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $3.25

  To escape from her own sadness, a woman finds refuge in a past time. In a village by the sea she watches the lives of the inhabitants unfold around her. But the year is now 1410 and this is a world of devils and miracles, a world in which there are no clear boundaries between reality and the power of the imagination. A man's discovery of a mermaid washed up on the sand starts a chain of events that leads three of the villagers to accompany the enigmatic figure of the leper on a pilgrimmage to the Holy Land. The woman joins them and sets out without the certainty of ever coming home again. The Leper's Companions was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1999

  $11.82

  One morning in 1410, two men from an East-Coast fishing village find a mermaid washed up on the sand. This discovery starts a chain of events that leads four of our villages-the priest, the shoemaker's wife, the fisherman's daughter and the leper-on a pilgrimage: across the North Sea, to Venice and then along the Mediterranean coast to the Holy Land. With the magical imagination that has illumiated her previous books, Julia Blackburn travels with her pilgrims. At first she follows from Distance, but gradually she pulls closer until the five centuries between their time and ours dissolve and the author has entered their world. A spellbinding novel by one of the most original writers currently at work, The Leper's Companions is an extraordinary evocation of the medieval world-a book about birth and death, about destiny, about the courage to let go without the certainty of surviving, to journey with no certainty of return.