Laurence Copeland

I am not a big fan of historical novels. Though, like millions of other folk, I read and enjoyed Wolf Hall, I was bored stiff by Margaret Yourcenar and Mary Renault. If a friend had not recommended this global best-seller to me, I would certainly never have read it. Apparently the manuscript was rejected by US publishers, and I can't say I'm surprised.For a start, it cuts across several genres: historical,whodunit,magic realism and at several points, veers towards the gay lit genre. All in all, a marketing executive's nightmare - and he or she seems to be the key (or sole) decision-maker in major publishing houses these days. It was finally published in Portugal in 1996, subsequently becoming a worldwide best-seller (at least according to the blurb). The whodunit is set against the background of the 1506 massacre of some 2000 of Lisbon's Jewish and "New Christian" (i.e. convert) minority by an Inquisition-inspired mob, looking for a scapegoat for the plague and famine ravaging the country at the time. In places, it makes extremely painful reading. The central character is a member of a network of students of the Kabbalah, whose uncle and mentor is murdered during the pogrom,but in circumstances that suggest he was not a random victim of the mob. We follow the young man's trail in pursuit of clues to the identity of the murderer,in the process encountering the spectrum of responses to the terror, from resistance to submission to collaboration. The novel touches on a number of themes: intolerance of course, but also the nature of faith and the supernatural, and the phenomenon of resilience in the face of suffering, a highly topical theme right now. Although the hero is somewhat implausibly strong in mind and body and his mute Muslim friend (or lover?) just as implausibly endowed with Solomonic wisdom, the other characters are far more believable. The writing style is mostly excellent,though there are one or two places where it could have benefitted from more vigilant editing. Credibility is, for me at least, a major issue with historical novels. Establishing the facts is not easy, but that is by no means the hardest part. The hardest problem is always how to represent the mindset of our ancestors. In the present case, how did 16th century (“early modern”) man and woman see the world? The only thing we can say for sure is that they didn’t see it as we see it. In particular, religion and faith were far more central to both society and the individual in those days than they are today. The success or failure of a historical novel depends crucially on how convincingly the author manages to recreate this mindset. Zimler quite subtly finesses the issue. His hero never really addresses any of the philosophical questions – why is his god allowing these awful things to happen? Should religious freedom be a right? Does the supernatural exist alongside the everyday world? – and I suspect this is how ordinary folk, all but the deepest thinkers, lived their lives in those days, without ever reflecting too deeply on why things are the way they are. Maybe that’s how most of the population of the world’s theocracies live their lives to the present day. The hero of this novel implicitly believes in ritual, but not in the faith that underlies it. The whole thrust of the novel is that, instead of counting on the revenge of heaven, he goes after the killer himself. (In any case, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” is New, not Old Testament.) All in all, I found the plot convincing enough to provide a very satisfying, if uncomfortable reading experience, one I would wholeheartedly recommend.