Quarantine — Jim Crace

A controversial novel of faith and mystery about a group of desert travelers and their encounter with Jesus.

Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year and a Booker Prize finalist

A New York Times Notable Book

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

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.

“Stunning . . . Crace is a writer of hallucinatory skill.” -- John Updike, The New Yorker

“Engaging . . . magical . . . There is wit and meat in every detail. . . . Crace's portrait of Jesus is audacious and disconcerting.” -- Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

“A spiritual mystery of the best kind . . . the creation of an ambitious imagination . . . a literary miracle.” -- USA Today

“The ways in which Crace has the six desert dwellers interrelate with each other and with Jesus are spellbinding; the book is a superbly crafted combination of historical and inspirational fiction that is genuinely unique.” -- Publishers Weekly