In 1535, many rebellions against the Catholic Church and the Pope take
place in the heart of a Europe struck by Lutheranism. In the German city of Münster, Bernd Rothman, a particularly
gifted orator, becomes the spiritual leader of the revolt against the church’s
corrupt hierarchy. Within the city
walls, religious liberty is claimed and brings the presence of pilgrims,
prophets and preachers. Outside the
city, however, the Catholic armies get ready for the most merciless
punishment. Eighteen years later, when
the uprising of Münster is only a vague memory and the Inquisition harshly
persecutes all types of heresy, the general inquisitor of Lyon must urgently
identify the author of an especially venomous anonymous manuscript, whose diffusion must be quickly
intercepted. It is the work of a
brilliant philologist and theologian, who is also an expert in medicine,
capable of sustaining the most heterodox theories about bodily functions. Joachim Pfister, an educated engraver of
print types that deals with various workshops in France, must follow his lead.
Antonio Orejudo was born in Madrid in 1963. He has a doctorate in
Spanish Philology and, for seven years, worked as a Spanish literature
professor in different universities throughout the United States. He is
currently a professor in the University of Almería and has spent a year as a
visiting professor in the University of Amsterdam. Fabulosas narraciones por
historias won the XX Tigre Juan Prize for the best first novel in 1997, one
year after its publication. In 2000 he won the XV Andalucía Prize for Novel
with Ventajas de viajar en tren (Advantages of Travelling by Train). Reconstrucción (Reconstruction, 2005), his most recent novel, has been translated
into German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Korean and Dutch, and the German
translation in particular was described as “the year’s most impressive Spanish
book”, according to the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung