An exquisitely rendered evocation of medieval England on the cusp of the Black Death, To Calais, in Ordinary Time is a character-driven meditation on faith, loss, class and gender as seen through the eyes of a gentlewoman, a proctor and a ploughman. A mighty feat of historical reimagining and linguistic dexterity.
Longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2020
Three journeys. One road.
England, 1348. A gentlewoman flees an odious arranged marriage, a Scots proctor sets out for Avignon and a young ploughman in search of freedom is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais. Coming in their direction from across the Channel is the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe.
As the journey unfolds, overshadowed by the archers' past misdeeds and clerical warnings of the imminent end of the world, the wayfarers must confront the nature of their loves and desires. A tremendous feat of language and empathy, it summons a medieval world that is at once uncannily plausible, utterly alien and eerily reflective of our own.
James Meek's extraordinary To Calais, In Ordinary Time is a novel about love, class, faith, loss, gender and desire - set against one of the biggest cataclysms of human history.
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 9781786896773
Number of pages: 400
Weight: 267 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 24 mm
Edition: Main
Fans of intelligent historical fiction will be enthralled by a story so original and so fully imagined. Meek shows the era as alien, which it is, and doesn't falsify it by assimilating it to ours. But his characters are recognisably warm and human - HILARY MANTEL
An inventive and original novel that captures the distant past and pins it to the page - The Times, Book of the Month
A glorious imaginative feat, full of complex, compelling, believable characters. Rarely have I been so captivated by a novel, so keen to hurry back to it and reimmerse myself in its world - SARAH WATERS
Meek's novel about the Black Death of 1348 has acquired an entirely unpredictable topicality . . . Captivating . . . Meek captures the mystery, squalor and occasional beauty of its medieval setting perfectly, and the encroaching horror that awaits all its characters gives the fascinating narrative an awful but compelling momentum - Observer
Meek employs great linguistic invention and remarkable imagination to conjure up a world in which readers rapidly become immersed - Sunday Times, Books of the Year
An astounding linguistic fantasy about the advent of the Black Death. French, Anglo-Saxon and Latin collide in a world of fake news, uncertain sexual borders and the dread of a catastrophe which looks in some ways very much like our own - PHILIP HENSHER, Spectator, Books of the Year
Meek brilliantly creates a variety of voices, and a language appropriate to the 14th century, for a story of the distant past with unsettling echoes of the present - Sunday Times
A triumphant medieval fable . . . At the centre of this beautiful novel is an exploration of the difference between romance and true love, allegory and reality, history and the present. It plays out in unexpected and delightful ways, and it would be unfair to make these explicit. To Calais, In Ordinary Time ends with a consummation both of its technique and of its story that is affirming, tender and a little bit glorious - Guardian
Ambitious . . . Through skilful deployment of language, Meek manages to craft a living, breathing world populated with characters that come alive in the mind . . . This is a fine novel that seems to speak across centuries with more than the likeness of truth - Financial Times
An extraordinary act of literary ventriloquism . . . A stained-glass window to the past . . . Be it essay or article, novel or short story, as a writer and time traveller James Meek does things differently and as readers we are all the better for that - Sunday Times
Bernadine, a damsel fated to an unwanted marriage, flees her father’s manor in pursuit of a romantic ideal; Will, a young herdsman, is sent to join a company of archers as part of the king’s levy; Thomas, a failed... More
He is, as they say, at the top of his game. For once everything the quotes say is true.
To Calais In Ordinary Time is the story of a group of travellers journeying across England at the outset of the Black Death. The entire novel is written in semi-medieval English and told from three different... More
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