In the Last Blue [Hardcover]

Carme Riera (Author), Jonathan Dunne (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 18, 2007

During the Spanish Inquisition on the island of Majorca, a small enclave of local Jews--all of whom have been baptized as Christians--determine to escape detention in the Inquisition by escaping to lands of freedom across the Atlantic. But weather frustrates their flight, and eventually thirty-seven of them were captured and condemned to burn at the stake in the Auto-de-Fe. In prose at once lyrical and suspenseful, Riera recreates the lives of Majorcan Jews in the seventeenth century--in a world of inquisitors, aristocrats, merchants, farmers, and soldiers--in a lush mosaic of history and period detail, religion and cultural lore. Already acclaimed around the world, In the Last Blue is at once a beautiful, poetic, riveting, and devastating tale of hope and fear.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This novel of the Spanish Inquisition was an acclaimed contribution to Catalan letters on its 1994 release. In an act of madness that he says was commanded him by an angel, Majorcan religious Jew Rafel Cortes tries to circumcise his adult male converso relatives. In the midst of this rampage, he catches his daughter Aina having sex with the Christian Juli Ramis and attacks him, too. His cousin, a silversmith also named Rafel Cortes, is a widower converso with a deep admiration of Catholic ritual; he's also an informer prized by the local clergy. The Jewish Rafel's extreme, irrational violence is meant to foreshadow the irrationality that sends 37 members of the Majorcan Jewish community (including the Jewish Rafel) to the stake after they're captured in a botched emigration attempt. The internecine Church and Jewish community politics leading up to that horror are treated with equal contempt by Riera, who notes in an afterword that the novel "does not aim to finger old wounds or open new ones." The awkward translation doesn't help in interpreting the book's graphic shock tactics and pulpy tonal shifts (the sex is as graphic as the violence), so it's hard to determine what Riera's aims actually are. (Jan.)
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From the Publisher

From a dominant force in Spanish literature, a riveting and heartrending story of a group of Majorcan Jews in the Inquisition

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (January 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585678538
• ISBN-13: 978-1585678532
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,208,799 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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