Customer Reviews

Q

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The turbulent years of the early Reformation are the focus of this novel of ideas written by four young people who call themselves, jointly, "Luther Blissett." Thomas Muntzer, a leader of the Anabaptists, believes that Martin Luther has become too close to the prince bishops, from whom he accepts protection, to be an effective leader. Gustav Metzger, the speaker, is one of Muntzer's followers, accompanying him during the trauma of the Peasants' Revolt (1524 - 26), which Luther opposes, and serving as an on-the-scene observer. When the revolt fails, villages are leveled, the rebels are put to the sword, and many of the leaders of the revolt are arrested, tortured, and then beheaded.

The revolt fails, in part, because of a spy named Qoelet (Q), whose diaries and letters to Cardinal Gianpietro Carafa, reveal his duplicitous actions. As the Anabaptist speaker escapes from one bloody crisis after another, changing his name whenever he changes locations, Q tries to track him down and to counteract the increasingly dangerous effects of Protestantism. Each of the speaker's failures is related to Q's countermoves, as the speaker travels throughout Germany to Switzerland and the Low Countries, following the spread of ideas. Twenty-five years after surviving the Peasants' Revolt and vicious reprisals against the Reformation everywhere he travels, the speaker, now known as Tiziano Rinato (Titian), arrives in Venice with the financing he needs to distribute "heretical" pamphlets. He and Q finally meet for a showdown.

The authors' casual, slangy style, filled with profanities, conveys the frustration and trauma of these four-hundred-year old events in a language with which the contemporary reader can easily identify. United primarily through the beliefs of the Reformation, the novel is episodic and not particularly suspenseful because the tension between the speaker and Q is not strong. These men do not know each other, and neither the reader nor the speaker can see Q's maneuverings until after the fact.

The complex events of the early Reformation have shaped the intellectual and historical destinies of western civilization, and the novel reflects this complexity, with the narrative alternating from 1555 to 1517 and from 1538 to 1527, and back. The reader must create his/her own timeline, though the events within each episode are clear. Filled with exciting, hair's-breadth escapes from disaster, fascinating and memorable depictions of (real) historical characters, insightfully presented intellectual conflicts, and dramatic events coming fast and furiously for over seven hundred pages, the novel is a rewarding adventure for the reader with a serious interest in the Reformation. Mary Whipple

Starting this book, it felt like I was reading a well-written historical novel. I found it more educating than entertaining, especially since it has to do with an era I knew very little about. However I did like the storytelling style - chapter by chapter, the two main characters alternate in the narration. One is an Anabaptist religious fighter, the other one his adversary, a spy in the payroll of a very powerful high-ranking Vatican official.
One thing I can say for sure is that the story gets better and more gripping as one reads along. After getting through the first 200-250 pages, I found myself more and more reluctant to put the book down, as it evolved into one of the best and most exciting spy stories I have ever read. From Muenster,Germany to Holland and on to Venice (with quite a few detours along the way) the reader is carried along in the swirls of a fascinating (although a bit complicated) plot.
In a few words: keep persisting in the beginning, you'll see that it's worth it.

I loved this book, I just don't see the negatives with it that other reviewers have. Yes, the short, episodic-like nature of the chapters often meant that it had to cut around the action a lot. But I never felt disconnected from the action or the ideas. No, it's probably not 100% historically accurate (having studied the reformation myself, i could see some flaws, mainly conceptual rather than factual), but few historical novels (or works of history, for that matter) are 100%. But there are lots of allegorical overtones in this book, as can be seen with the illustrations at the end that are often accompanied by quotes from political prisoners and petitions from the last decade or two. I would imagine many conservatives and those on the political right would have major problems with some of the issues raised in this book.

And all this aside, I thought it was just a bloody good read (despite guessing Q's real identity about a hundred, hundred and fifty pages in).

This book was written by a team of Italian writers who chose the pseudonim of "Luther Blisset", a soccer player who briefly played for AC Milan in Italy during the 80s. Having said this, the book has nothing to do with soccer or Italy, it's the story, set in Europe in the 16th-17th century of an erethic fanatic, who embraces several different heresies, and his life-long fight with an inquisitor named Q who looks very similar to nowadays secret agents. The story can be read on two different levels, on the surface it's just a very intriguing spy-story, set throughout Europe in the XVII century, during the Lutheran reform. But below the surface, there is the detailed description of the reasons that helped Martin Luther to succeed, its quick acceptance by the German ruling classes who saw this as a way to get free from Rome and the Pope, and how this set in motion a series of heretic groups very similar to today's terrorists. The purpose of these heretics was mor often a social one, they instigated revolts in the german and Dutch cities, who ended up with the massacre of the rich and the powerful, a sort of rehearsal of the French Revolution! There is not, in any way, a political stance, although the positive attitude towards yesterday's erethics (and therefore this century's political terrorists to which they can be easily compared!) shows the political attitude of the writers. All in all a very good book, it will help you to understand the historical and political situation that created the Lutheran Reform and it will make you think a lot, but in the meantime it will entertain you with a very well written spy-story. Read it, you won't regret it!

This is not the type of book you attempt half-heartedly -at over 630 pages of story, you need to be committed if you are going to finish. But if you do see it through to the end, you will be well rewarded with an interesting, informative and involving tale.

Through the book we follow a man of many names, one of them being Gert of the Well, as he follows his radical Anabaptist beliefs into a struggle that leads to anarchy and defeat. After two failed uprisings, he comes to question his convictions, and drifts from the cold of Northern Europe to Switzerland and then Venice, along the way falling in with fellow revolutionaries and reactionaries, continually putting himself in the face of danger, not always sure why. His densely packed story is continually juxtaposed with the writings of his nemisis Q, a spy inthe pay of the manevolent Catholic Carafa, a man who is to ultimately become Pope. Gert and Q are two sides of the same coin - men fighting for strongly felt principles, yet not always sure that they believe in those principles anymore.

This book is very involved and dense with information. Based on true events and characters, it can occassionally drift into textbook-like recreations. But it saves itself with some vivid storytelling - sieges, madness, the richness that was Venice in the 16th century. And there is a gripping story throughout - never knowing if and when Gert and Q will come face to face.

Stick with this book - it improves as it goes along, and the section in the last quarter or so, set in Venice, is the best. When you have finished you will feel rewarded not only for having finished such a huge book, but for having been privy to such an interesting story

Negative comments in other reviews all relate to the reader's preexisting expectations of the novel based on some shallow comparison to U.E., for example. I will not insult the quality of this novel with this sort of comparison. Pick it up. Read it. For those accostomed to reading Dan Brown, this will take more time and effort on the part of the reader, but it is worth it. This book has the potential to alter your world-view.

Set in Reformation Europe between 1525 and 1555, Q is a historical novel of breathtaking proportions. Our narrator is a soul-searching wanderer who goes by many names (most notably Gert from the Well [in Muenster] and Titian [in Italy]) and who casts his lot with the rebels who have decided to fight authority in many of that era's pivotal, and bloody, conflicts. From the Peasants' War to the siege of Anabaptist Muenster to the Italian Inquisition, our hero thrives as an itinerant rabble-rouser -- a dreamer who sides with the underdogs not only as a matter of principle but as a matter of what it means to be alive in such heady times.

Bearing witness to this era through our narrator's eyes is a revelation: it allows us to get a *feel* for what the Reformation and its attendant social movements might have meant for the many different people -- bohemians, "heretics," the poor -- who understood this as an opportunity to change the course of their everyday lives. Thus forsaking rote "historical accuracy" and "period-accurate dialogue," Q succeeds as a historical *novel* in the way it amplifies the deeply held convictions, motivations, and beliefs that fluorished among the oppressed during the Reformation's bloodiest years.

Q is also just a great tale of espionage and intrigue. While the reader may be confused at first as to how the papal informer's letters and observations bear on our narrator's journeys, these characters' intertwining fate eventually emerges as one of the book's most powerful themes. Indeed, one of the more interesting aspects of the novel is how Q, the informer, starts off as a relatively flat character (a professional spy through and through) but then comes into his own in the last third of the book with more personal reflections about his life and work.

To conclude, I have to say that reviews that castigate this book for not being historically accurate baffle me. We read historical *fiction* not to point out factual minutiae but to take a pause from our present lives and dwell in some moment from the past. Historical fiction doesn't court nitpicky, holier-than-thou factual assertions -- it gives us emotional and intellectual *motivation* to want to explore the past in a deep and engaged way. In this regard, I believe that Q is a rousing success and one of the best historical novels to have been published in recent years.

Usually I am not a big fan of historical fiction, but this book really is mind blowing.
I had the pleasure of reading it in Italian first. Translating this book into English must have required a superhuman effort.
Every sentence is just perfect in Italian, as it resonates with previous uses of certain combinations of words. If you were an Italian leftist, politically active in the Seventies and early Eighties, this book would have a completely different impact on you, as it would talk to you IN YOUR LANGUAGE, and by doing so, every word would become your Proustian madeleine. You are at turns, the object of discourse, the immediate addressee, and a superaddressee. This is what Bakhtin describes as the tertiary nature of dialogue...and yes, Mikhail Bakhtin was a genius and Luther Blissett gave us a great example of what can be achieved by applying his theories.

I first read about the Anabaptists when i went to Munster for an art show several years ago, as some of the artists invited to produce site-specific works made references to them. The memory of what happened in Muenster is still vivid today, as the citizens of this city still feel an emotional connection to that page of their civic history. Reading Q brought back a lot of the memories i have of that place, and it also helped me retrieve memories of the Venice ghetto, and the Giudecca....not to mention Antwerp and all the places i visited prior to reading this book. The great thing is that my memories became intertwined with Duerer's depictions as i turned the pages of this book.

A great intellectual pleasure...all concealed in a spy story that you cannot put down. Highly recommended!

I bought this book (English edition) in Rome several years ago, not realizing it was a translation from the Italian. I read it once then; it wasn't easy.
I've read it a couple more times since; it's a lot easier second time around. I've also read most of it in Italian,
and enjoyable and valuable as that was, I have to say, I don't think the English reader is missing much reading this translation.

I don't know if it's really the "greatest novel ever written", as one reviewer said, but I can understand why (s)he said that.

The people who wrote negative reviews about this book simply have no clue. I agree that there are some jarring anachronisms of speech in the translation, but it's a trivial flaw. I would imagine that rebellious peasants, soldiers, criminals, brothel keepers, did swear a lot, just as in this book, just as in the Nixon White House, just as on "Deadwood", and if they didn't say "wtf" they certainly said something equivalent. They may not have said things like "touched a live nerve", but who cares? And remember, it's a translation for frak's sake! (And I would say, an excellent translation; I'm just saying, while you're picking nits, don't blame the authors for the trivial pecadilloes of the translation).

The number of times our hero changes his name, identity and location, along with the interleaving of Q and the polynomial hero, and the interleaving of different times-- those things do make it difficult, especially if you are, as I was and as some of these negative reviewers obviously are, utterly clueless about the history under consideration. Probably if you know a little about it it's not quite so difficult.

That's why it went better for me on second reading. Also, this time around there's Wikipedia, and a lot of other useful sources of information about things like the Diet of Worms, Council of Trent, Cardinal Carafa, and so on, and I consulted them frequently, so my knowledge of this history is greatly enhanced, in a way that never would have happened otherwise.

It's true that many of the characters-- and there are a lot of characters-- aren't developed, but that makes sense given the way the book is structured. Or maybe it's even a flaw, but a minor one. This novel contains riches of a kind you won't find in most novels. It is difficult, but extremely well worth it.

Many today indentify Martin Luther, Hulderich Zwingli, and John Calvin with the Reformation. Blisset uses a Roman Cahtolic spy, Q, to show the various strands of faith still making up churches claiming the Reformation. He desn't mention Zwingli, a major oversight. But, one spy could only deal with so many reformers in a lifetime.
Blisset also shows the difficult times of the Reformation. He does well to show hte bloody mess the ears olf religion really were and can still be. All in all, a wonderful ficional tour into the real Reformation. You'd also do well to read a history of the Reformation afterward.