The story of Joan of Arc has always held a special fascination for writers – among them Voltaire, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and Jean Anouilh. Here Thomas Keneally transforms the legend, presenting a Joan who is at once a tough radical, an instinctive soldier, a nagging prophet and a touchingly vulnerable girl – a haunting and compelling heroine framed by the tumultuous times in which she lived.
Reviews
A St. Joan book to remember . . . the familiar tragedy flames up with new and terrible effects in the retelling
A vivid recreation of Joan's age, so full of hypocrisy, vengeance, blood, treachery and madness - one that is eminently worth reading
A fictionally and spiritually satisfying Joan
A great storyteller
To say that Mr Keneally writes like a man possessed implies an abandon and breathlessness far from his tense, sinewy prose; yet this is perhaps the only way to convey the power and immediate quality of his remarkable novel. The effect is one of excitement and absolute authority
Saint Joan lives again, robustly, in a way we have not known her before . . . The result is startling and, at the same time, amazingly plausible . . . Keneally's Jehanne, alone, is supple and fully dimensional. She is, at times, sharply nostalgic for the world of ordinary loves and lives she must leave behind . . . none of this diminishes Joan. It ennobles her sacrifice by making it real.
A great storyteller
A St Joan book to remember . . . the familiar tragedy flames up with new and terrible effects in the retelling
A vivid recreation of Joan's age, so full of hypocrisy, vengeance, blood, treachery and madness - one that is eminently worth reading
A fictionally and spiritually satisfying Joan
To say that Mr Keneally writes like a man possessed implies an abandon and breathlessness far from his tense, sinewy prose; yet this is perhaps the only way to convey the power and immediate quality of his remarkable novel. The effect is one of excitement and absolute authority
Praise for Thomas Keneally:
'Thomas Keneally is one of the historical novel's most expert practitioners' Guardian
'The best Australian writer alive' Auberon Waugh