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The Leper's Companions

Julia Blackburn

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The Leper's Companions

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As The Lepers' Companions begins, we know only that the narrator has lost someone she loves. In her bereavement, she creates a past in which she might both lose and find herself: a fifteenth-century village in a land of saints and spirits, inexplicable afflictions and miraculous awakenings. With a band of pilgrims - among them an old man, his pregnant daughter, a priest, a dying woman, and a leper - she discovers a beached mermaid, watches a priest drive madness from a woman's mouth, enters a mossy forest inhabited by a hunted man covered in shaggy hair, and witnesses a map being digested in the belly of a ravenous woman. Moving effortlessly between the magical and the real, the past and the present, the journey of the narrator and her companions transcends the physical terrain and becomes a fantastical quest for rebirth. We are skillfully ushered into the emotional lives of each of the travelers as they reflect and ultimately redefine the life of the narrator.

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Publisher
Pantheon Books
Year
1999
ISBN-13
9780679439844
Genre
FantasyFiction
Topics
Grief and lossPilgrimage and quest for rebirthMagical realism in medieval setting

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