A bestseller across Europe, a hugely ambitious and brilliant achieved novel, set among the chaos of Reformation Europe, 'Q' is a cult book for the 21st Century.
1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 theses, demanding reform of the Catholic Church, to the door of the cathedral church in Wittenberg, setting off the period of upheaval, war and violence we now know as the Reformation. Under the reigns of the Habsburg Charles V and his enemy the French king Francis I, the Papacy desperately struggles to secure its position and undermine its political opponents.
Meanwhile, as declared foes of the Roman Church, the radical Protestant Anabaptists are in rebellion against the entire order of European society, everywhere persecuted and brutalised by those outside their sphere.
In this age devastated by the wars of religion, a young theology student adopts the cause of the heretics and the disinherited. Across the chessboard of Europe, from the German plains to the flourishing Dutch cities and down to Venice, the gateway to the East, our hero, a 'Survivor', an Anabaptist who travels under many names, and his enemy, Q, a papal informer and heretic-hunter, play a game in which no moves are forbidden. What begins as a struggle to reveal each other's identity eventually becomes part of a much greater mission: to destroy and achieve domination over each other.
First published anonymously in Italy, written by four young writers sheltering under the pseudonym Luther Blissett, 'Q' is as richly imagined as Umberto Eco's 'The Name Of The Rose' or Iain Pears' 'An Instance Of The Fingerpost' and as subversively political as Michel Houellebecq's 'Atomised'. Part thriller, part brilliant clever novel of ideas, 'Q' has become a cult and a bestseller across Europe.
