Jim crace quarantine ebook

Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Quarantine by Jim Crace. Quarantine by Jim Crace. 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 — madman, sadist, rapist, even a Satan — who holds them in his tyrannical power. Yet there is also another, a faint figure in the distance, fasting for forty days, a Galilean who they say has the power to work miracles Here, trapped in the wilderness, their terrifying battle for survival begins Get A Copy.

Paperback , pages. Published March 15th by Picador first published June More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews.

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Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Quarantine. Forty days as a spiritually significant period first appears in the book of Genesis. It is the period of persistent rain which wipes out the creation that has disappointed YHWH.

It appears that YHWH was banking on a bit of high-speed natural selection. One can only speculate about the ethical quality of human beings if the original gene pool had survived intact.

While the Jewish nation was being held captive in Egypt, Moses spends forty days on the mountain of Horeb conferring with YHWH, the results of which are freedom and the tablets of the law. There may have been some spiritual purification or preparation involved but this is not reported in the biblical text. Legends suggest some sort of conference with the divine presence but its character is unknown. One further reference to forty days, also at the mountain of Horeb, is made regarding the time of penance by the prophet Elijah.

Finally there are three more uses of the period of forty years - the first for the time required to purify pagan lands before they can be settled by Israel; the second is the period of captivity of the Israelites by the Philistines as a punishment for disobedience; the last is as a period of punishment declared by the prophet Ezekiel on the land of Egypt. The New Testament story is clearly important and transmitted with variations through at least several of the Christ-following traditions.

The forty days, therefore, designating a time of transformation, is of central importance in Christianity. He would encounter god or die, that was the nose and tail of it. That's why he'd come. Jesus shares his quarantine with six others, four volunteers like himself and a hapless couple, she heavily pregnant and he an abusive monster. The randomness of this small collective is noteworthy as an innovative departure by Crace. It allows a social interaction among strangers into the depths of the forty days experience, whatever that experience entails.

Each member of the quarantined party has a unique issue: a Jewish matron, possibly infertile; an elderly Jewish stonemason hoping for a miracle cancer-cure; a Bedouin shepherd, apparently mad; a handsome blond foreigner seeking holy wisdom rather than god; the couple which had been abandoned by their caravanserai, she longing for freedom, he for wealth and power; and of course Jesus, whose encounter with god was dependent in his mind on the endurance of physical punishment.

For Jesus, god is the creator and guarantor of orderliness in the universe. His choice is to believe in cosmic-order rather than pandemonium.

This would be the sign he was looking for - his participation in the new creation. He wanted his god tangible. He, like Moses and Elijah, wants alone-time with god.

But his colleagues have different ideas. None of them has any interest in this tangible divinity nonsense. All they want are improvements in their situations not any sort of Sinaitic epiphany. So they annoy him, meddle in his solitude, harass him with trivial concerns, and interrupt his planned ritual.

But this is how he had been raised in a traditional Jewish household. These are the things that made him what he was - a devout servant of the Almighty who was keen to attract his favour - and what he hoped to become - a renowned preacher and interpreter of the law. They were a superstitious lot, Jesus forty days companions. He learns these things from them. But these are incidental to his real transformation, which has principally to do with his discovery that god, to the extent he exists, is present in them; that they are the source of his own re-creation; that without them his beliefs and ritual practices are useless, merely distracting self-delusions.

In particular, its outcome cannot be anticipated. What is changed is an appreciation of what it means to exist as a person. The combination of isolation, physical hardship and an attitude of openness to change in the status quo produces not just change but changed expectations - about ourselves as well as about the world in general.

He ultimately knows himself, not the wilderness, to be the object of continuing creation; and the means of that continuing creation is other people, even the bad, crazy, and troubled ones, especially the bad, crazy, and troubled ones. This conclusion and the religious life it implies is as much a surprise to him as it is to his family and acquaintances.

His forty days includes all previous biblical experiences as well - from Noah to Ezekiel, from purification to penance. View all 5 comments. They were amazed at all the stories he could tell. One of the travellers gave Musa food to eat. Another let him ride inside his donkey cart. He sat on bales of scrub hay, his fat legs hanging off the back. What little sun there They were amazed at all the stories he could tell. What little sun there was came from the summit of the precipice.

Musa looked up to the scree, shading his eyes against the light, and checked the spot where he had left his worldly goods. He was alarmed for an instant. There was somebody climbing down towards his hiding place, half hidden in the shade. A man or woman? Musa was not sure. Whoever it was did not stop to search amongst the rocks, but hurried down across a patch of silvery shale. Now Musa had a clearer view; a thin and halting figure tacking the scree, almost a mirage—ankleless, no arms—in the lifting light.

Musa shouted to his new companions. The healer. Risen from the grave. I read that passage earlier this Easter morning, a day associated with the end of the fasting period in the Christian Church, and with resurrection.

The book gods are good to me surely. Mar 08, Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing. What has one to do in the desert? Why do pilgrims, sinners, hermits and saints go there? Why had Jesus gone to the wilderness?

There was nothing else for Jesus to do, except to simplify his life. Repentance, meditation, prayer. Those were the joys of solitude. They had sustained the prophets for a thousand years. And they would be his daily companions. He started rocking with each word of prayer, putting all his body into it, speaking it out loud, concentrating on the sound, so that no part of hi What has one to do in the desert?

He started rocking with each word of prayer, putting all his body into it, speaking it out loud, concentrating on the sound, so that no part of him could be concerned with lesser matters or be reminded of the fear, the hunger and the chill. He seemed to find his adolescent rhapsodies. The prayers were in command of him. He shouted out across the valley, happy with the noise he made. But who is nearer to you, God or Devil? Who sends all the ordeals and temptations?

He begged the devil to fly up and save him from the wind. He'd almost welcome the devil more than god. For the devil can be traded with, and exorcized. But god is ruthless and unstable. Tyrants and God have the same nature — they are liars and they persuade their own purposes.

Nov 04, Zaki rated it really liked it. Even though he uses simple vocabulary the percussion of each sentence is very complicated and Jim Grace attends to it very closely.

They are so musically and rhythmically based that you almost want to tap your feet to them. I was really charmed by this story. It started off with five pilgrims including Jesus venturing out into the Judean desert for a forty day quarantine.

They choose caves not far apart from each other to spend their quarantine in and search for enlightenment or purification. For the quarantiners are hoping to cleanse themselves of madness, cancer and infertility. What follows is a period of fasting and praying and in due course the tired and thirsty pilgrims become afflicted with religious and spiritual hallucinations. And dark visions. Now I was under the impression that this book was very close to the traditional story of Jesus in the wilderness even though Jesus in this book was portrayed as a human with human failings.

Quarantine looked to me like the most real story about the origin of Jesus and the Christian religion. I thought that Jim Grace could only be a devout Christian but reading up on him I've discovered that he is actually a staunch atheist and this book is not written from the Christian perspective at all.

In fact, the idea for this story came to Jim Grace from a dark and troubled place down the road from where he used to live. This place was a hostel for patients with mental health problems. The patients used to wander around his suburb and fascinate Jim Grace with their stories and illnesses. One day he sneaked into this hostel which consisted of tiny rooms like cells occupied by a community of depressives, addicts, obsessives and schizophrenics.

Jim Grace wanted to write about this community but instead of setting it in Birmingham he was looking for a parallel; a place where he could set that subject matter which would dislocate the reader. He is after all a fabulist writer. One day his friends who were visiting Palestine sent him a postcard of the Mount of Temptation. This was the place where the historical Christ spent his forty days of battling with the devil.

In this postcard he noticed lots of caves and it occurred to him that at the time of Christ anyone who had a problem, any depressive, addict or obsessive, not just the Son of God, might have taken to these caves to battle with their demons.

And this became the parallel to the hostel down his road. View all 10 comments. Shelves: booker-long-and-shortlist , reviewed , own-in-paperback , owned-and-unread , read-in , owned-books.

Despite not being a long novel - the Penguin edition clocks in at just pages - Quarantine aims to achieve a high goal: retell the story of Jesus's 40 day sojourn in the desert and his temptation by the Devil. The problem with retellings of well-known stories is precisely the fact that they are well known - the author has to show a certain degree of invention t Jim Crace's short novel Quarantine was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in , but did not win - it lost to The God of Small Things.

The problem with retellings of well-known stories is precisely the fact that they are well known - the author has to show a certain degree of invention to make up for that fact. It can be done by adapting the story to the modern setting, which is what Francis Ford Coppola did to Heart of Darkness and created Apocalypse Now. Many foreign films have been remade for the American market, keeping the story but localizing the cast and setting. Crace does not take this road - his work is set in the Judaean Desert years ago - but the story does not follow the Biblical gospels.

Crace's Jesus is all too human: he has no divine aspirations, and came to the desert to fast and grow closer to God. He throws himself totally at his mercy - with no food and water and little shelter - guided only by his faith. Crace's Jesus is only one of several characters driven to the remoteness of the desert. The novel features six other characters, all of whom interact with Jesus in some way: the most interesting - and important - is Musa, a greedy trader and abusive man who was left in the desert by his partners to die a slow death, sickness eating him from the inside.

He is accompanied by Miri, his pregnant wife who eagerly awaits his death. Although he is the most important person of the scene, Jesus is not the main character - in fact he is mostly seen through the eyes of others, who all project themselves onto him and see him through their needs. These characters are essential for Jesus to fulfill his destiny. Musa will come in contact with Jesus, and will be touched by him - all the people will be touched by Jesus in one way or another, and the impact he had on them will have consequences for the whole world.

Crace's writing has the dreamlike and hazy quality, almost hallucinatory, appropriate for the setting and theme; he focuses on the miniscule detail of the wilderness of the desert, its animals, plants and insects. Folk beliefs of the times and people play an important part: Musa's sickness is understood to have been caused by a devil who snuck inside him through his mouth, and lit a fire under his chest.

In I've read Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ , which I thought was a fantastic re-telling of the story of Jesus and a fable of the rise of Christianity and a controversial one, too, resulting in hate threats of damnation being sent to the author. In his work, Pullman not focused his story on Jesus - he split him into two distinct persons, Jesus and Christ, which I thought worked splendidly and his book impacted me greatly - something which I did not expect and was verypleasantly surprised by.

I felt that Jim Crace's book lost potential impact by letting Jesus be seen largely through the eyes of other characters; they themselves are well drawn and interesting especially Musa , but you just can't compete with the Messiah. I mean, how often do you really get to see the Son of God up close and personal? In the end, found Quarantine to be a fablelike novel, stylishly written and full of symbolism, but constrained by the story it took upon itself - which is well known and holds few surprises even for those who do not know their Bible.

It entered the canon of literary stories of Jesus - done by writers as different as Anne Rice and Norman Mailer - but I'm afraid that for all its quality if will remain in the background precisely because of its gentleness and meekness, overshadowed by more daring and controversal projects.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize I first read this book shortly after the paperback was first published in the late 90s, and although I remember liking it, I remember very little of the detailed content. So I welcomed the chance to reread it as part of The Mookse and the Gripes group's current project to revisit the Booker shortlist. If anything I was even more impressed that before, and it was interesting to pick up on what was discussed at the time of Crace's last book The Melody , abo Shortlisted for the Booker Prize I first read this book shortly after the paperback was first published in the late 90s, and although I remember liking it, I remember very little of the detailed content.

If anything I was even more impressed that before, and it was interesting to pick up on what was discussed at the time of Crace's last book The Melody , about the way Crace uses imaginary locations as the settings for his books because he does not want to get bogged down with too much real world details.

This discussion mentions some invented natural elements that recur in several of his books, for example the tarbony tree. So this is very much a fictional book, but one that addresses well known religious themes and Biblical stories, and because Crace, like me, is an atheist, I had no problems with some of his more controversial and provocative choices, and can't speak for those with keener religious sensibilities. The starting point is the well-known Biblical story of Jesus's 40 days in the wilderness.

Crace was interested in bringing a modern scientific perspective to the question of what might happen if a real human tried to emulate him. Although Jesus plays a part in the story, and is generally treated respectfully, Crace's story diverges a long way from the original. At the start of the book we meet Miri, the wife of Musa, a travelling merchant who has fallen ill while travelling across the wilderness with a larger group.

Thinking he is about to die, they leave the couple behind in their tent with just enough provisions to survive until the party returns. Miri attempts to tend him, but the situation looks hopeless and she starts to dig a grave by hand.

Meanwhile 5 other travellers arrive, intending to use caves as homes for a religious quarantine period. The first 4 are normal humans, and looking for divine help with domestic problems by fasting during daylight hours for 40 days, and the fifth, who remains apart from the rest of the group, is Jesus, looking to start his more extreme form of quarantine. While Miri is at the grave site, Jesus visits Musa's tent, takes a little food and water and nurses Musa a little.

Meanwhile the grave starts to fill with groundwater, providing a vital source of water to the quarantiners, and Musa wakes up alone in his tent.

Musa is very much the villain of the piece, and his miraculous recovery has consequences. His merchant instincts lead him to find a way to exploit the other quarantiners, firstly by claiming to own the land and also by selling them some of the supplies he has in his tent.

He is an expert story-teller, and he soon has them all doing his bidding. Musa is an abusive husband, and also covets Marta, a female quarantiner who is desperate for a child because her marriage is approaching the ten year point at which being childless becomes grounds for divorce. Jesus proves harder to crack - he has found the most remote cave, only accessible by a risky scramble down a cliff face, and although Musa tries to tempt him with food and water, he refuses all sustenance, confident that his God will protect him.

The others betray the fat Musa and escape without him - Miri goes with Marta, who has been raped by Musa but believes herself to be pregnant. The ever-resourceful Musa finds his own way out, and convinces himself he has seen Jesus twice since his apparent death. He resolves to stop trading in material goods and concentrate on selling his storytelling. I am looking forward to rereading The God of Small Things and Grace Notes to see whether they are still as good as I remember them to be.

View all 6 comments. Feb 16, Martine rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: anyone with an open mind towards Christianity. Shelves: favourites , historical-fiction , british , psychological-drama , modern-fiction. Now this is how you write a gripping book.

Quarantine is what you might call a novel of ideas. It seeks to give an account of Jesus' forty-day sojourn in the desert and to explain how Christianity or, if you will, the cult of Christ came into being. While it's not overly blasphemous, it does present its theories in a way to which people who take the New Testament very literally might object.

See, for one thing, Crace's Jesus is not the Son of God, but rather a clumsy and all too human carpenter Now this is how you write a gripping book. See, for one thing, Crace's Jesus is not the Son of God, but rather a clumsy and all too human carpenter who takes his faith more seriously than his work; for another, he is not actually the main character of the novel, nor even its most interesting character.

That honour goes to Musa, surely one of the most fascinating villains in twentieth-century literature. Quarantine is about the apparently common in Biblical times act of quarantining -- i. Jesus is only one of several characters who, on the first day of the story, arrive in an inhospitable part of the wilderness to take up lodgings in some barren caves and begin meditating.

He's different from the other quarantiners, though. While the others only fast during the day and aren't averse to talking to each other when not meditating, Jesus is determined not to eat or drink anything for forty days and to stay completely on his own. But before he retreats into his cave, he touches a dying man, Musa, who promptly recovers.

Needless to say, Musa is convinced Jesus is a miraculous healer, and tries to get him out of his cave to talk. But Jesus refuses, believing Musa is a devil come to tempt him. And so a fascinating battle of wills begins, which quickly works its way to a haunting and remarkably plausible conclusion. Crace is a fabulous writer. His metaphor-laden prose has a breath-taking, occasionally hallucinatory quality especially in the marvellous second half of the book , and his descriptions of pretty much anything are superb.

His Judean desert is an exciting place, so vivid it almost becomes a character in itself. His descriptions of fasting and what it does to one's body and mind are terrifying. Trust me, after reading this book you'll never consider hunger striking again. Yet it's the characters who steal the show.

Jesus' struggle against temptation and hallucinations is rendered impressively, and rather more realistically than the stories told about this in the Bible.

But while Jesus is important to the story for the effect he has on the other characters, he is not the most riveting character in the book. That would be Musa, a tyrannical merchant with a frightful sense of entitlement and very little compassion for anyone, let alone a bunch of afflicted souls who have come to the desert to pray. He's a nasty piece of work, is Musa, but Crace has drawn him so well that you find yourself fascinated by his exploits, even when he sets out, over the course of several pages, to plan the rape of the lone woman among the quarantiners some of the most riveting prose I've ever come across.

No, Musa is not Satan, but it's easy to see why Jesus believes he is. He's rotten to the core, which makes what he does on the final page of the book all the more extraordinary. I found myself glued to the pages whenever the story was told from his point of view, admiring Crace for the skill with which he brought his antagonist to life without making you want to close the book in disgust. The other perspectives are less impressive, but still entirely worth reading.

Crace can draw characters in just a few lines, and his way with words is such that the effect is quite dazzling. He is quite the storyteller. Do seek this book out, people. Don't believe the baffling number of three-star reviews on this site; instead, check out the plethora of five-star reviews on Amazon.

Then read the book. I promise you you won't regret it. View all 8 comments. Jan 03, Ken Ryu rated it it was amazing.

In the desert, a small band of pilgrims seeks enlightenment and miracles during a day fast. One of the men, a merchant named Musa, is near death. His wife Miri uses her hands to dig a burial ground. Languishing and soon to expire, the sickened Musa is cured by Jesus.

He too has come to pray and fast. Miri is shocked to find her husband revived on her return to their itinerant cave dwelling. After his recovery, Musa takes little time to terrorize the small group of travelers.

He takes their mo In the desert, a small band of pilgrims seeks enlightenment and miracles during a day fast. He takes their money, goods and any food they own. Jesus remains apart from the main contingent and suffers intensely as he prays and fasts. The contrast between Jesus and Musa is the central thrust of the action. Musa represents temptation and sin. He actively seeks to spoil Jesus' fast while running roughshod over the others.

The pathway to salvation for the worshipers is fraught with difficulties. Musa looms dangerously over all their fates. Croce's language matches the spareness and desperation of the land.

A drop of water or a taste of honey represents a fortuitous grasp of life sustaining substances. He depicts Jesus' day wilderness meditation in convincing and present force. He is a fly on the wall recording meticulous details of the experience of the men and women during their desert quarantine.

The writing is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy though the plot is simpler. Croce is either brave or crazy to take on Jesus' life with this raw parable.

Few would dare such an audacious theme and far fewer would succeed so brilliantly. Sep 10, Val rated it it was amazing Shelves: booker-prizes. The inspiration for the book is the account in the Bible of Jesus's fast and temptation in the desert, as he was preparing himself for his ministry. Five people are fasting in this story for various reasons, one of them named Jesus.

He is the only one who fasts both day and night, the others break their fast after sunset. He is the only one not tempted, bullied or taken advantage of by the 'devil', here an unscrupulous merchant called Musa. The story and characters are both excellent, but the wa The inspiration for the book is the account in the Bible of Jesus's fast and temptation in the desert, as he was preparing himself for his ministry. The story and characters are both excellent, but the way the author uses biblical sources mixed with normal life makes the book outstanding.

Dec 18, Fiona rated it liked it Shelves: the-past , books-i-have-taken-to-dinner , read-in , comfort-zone-stretchers. I feel like Jim Crace maybe shot himself in the foot a little bit with this one, as far as the star ratings go - I swung between one and four stars about every thirty pages, which is to say sometimes it was fascinating-unsettling and sometimes it was skin-crawl-unsettling and the latter is Not For Me and that is what one star means. The skin-crawl was deliberate, though, so Crace definitely did what he set out to do.

I'm still not sure I got the rating right. But there comes a point after which i I feel like Jim Crace maybe shot himself in the foot a little bit with this one, as far as the star ratings go - I swung between one and four stars about every thirty pages, which is to say sometimes it was fascinating-unsettling and sometimes it was skin-crawl-unsettling and the latter is Not For Me and that is what one star means.

But there comes a point after which it really doesn't matter, so three stars it is and he's welcome to them. I picked this up while I was ineffectively Christmas shopping - put me in Waterstones and my gift buying becomes a case of one for you, one for me. The cover of my copy looks like this: which, doesn't it look so dramatic? I love it very much. I am a fabulist, more attracted to metaphor than reportage. So the idea was left to brew for several years, until one day my metaphor dropped through the letterbox.

It was a postcard sent by some friends visiting Jericho in Palestine. It showed the Mount of Temptation where the historical Jesus was reputed to have spent his 40 days rebuffing the advances of the Devil before embarking on his ministry. Yet there were many man-made, cell-like caves in the crumbling hillside, not just the one that Jesus would have needed.

It occurred to me that possibly at that time anyone who had a problem, any depressive, addict or obsessive, not just the aspirant Son of God, might have taken to these caves to battle with their demons. It would have been a community of people living on the edge: an ancient version of my Moseley hostel, in other words.

I had my title for the book. I had my metaphor. Now I could begin. But books - if they are going well - have the habit of shaking off this author and his first intentions, of setting and insisting on unforeseen agendas of their own.

I can remember very well the afternoon that Quarantine abandoned me and my intended satire of Thatcherism and went off on a tangent. It was the passage when Jesus was meant to make a brief guest appearance. He'd be allowed half a sentence at the most, and only to give my chosen setting its historical provenance.

I wrote. By tea-time, the traveller had seemed to cure - with a miracle? Jesus was unignorable now. He would become a major character. No, not the Holy Ghost, I said, but the Imp of Storytelling, celebrated for its mischievousness, its cunning, and its generosity.

It had caused me, an atheist, intent on writing a novel broadly about contemporary earthly matters, to produce a book of strangely scriptural intensity, a novel which mostly underscored people's faith in gods rather than undermined it.

I was surprised and elated when I finished writing Quarantine by how thoroughly I had been abandoned by the narrative and how exalted its tone and ambition had become.