This sprawling, very long and quite good historical novel was written by a group of four Italian men in 1999. It has been lauded throughout Europe for its scope and breathtaking creativity, and critiqued for its attempt to blend the vernacular into 16th century dialogue. As it provides fascinating insight and background to the first forty years of the Reformation on the continent, and has left an opening for a sequel, I look forward to the follow-up.
The Q of the title is the nom de guerre of a spy in the employ of the Inquisition. His story is told through letters to his sponsor, Cardinal Carafa, later Pope Paul IV. Quelling heresy, hounding and slaughtering heretics, and suppressing subversive literature are the primary responsibilities of the Inquisition and of Q, whose full name is Quoelet. Q infiltrates and betrays Lutheran and Anabaptist sects throughout Germany, the Netherlands, and ultimately in Venice. Carafa, on the other hand, is playing a game of three dimensional chess focused on restraining the Hapsburg emperors, and is willing to work with the French, the Lutherans, and the Sultan to accomplish his goals. The narrator of the story, and the man Q hounds for thirty years is an Anabaptist named Gert. He is a fighter, organizer, preacher, and perhaps more than anything else, a survivor. The most enlightening bit of background information has to do with the Reformation more as a social or economic action than as an doctrinal one.
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