Rapture, Emily Maguire
Rapture, Emily Maguire
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
Club: $15.99

Rapture
The reimagined life of the first and only female pope

Author: Emily Maguire

Narrator: Rose Akroyd

Unabridged: 7 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Sceptre

Published: 10/01/2024

Synopsis

'A spectacular story of shape-shifting, love and faith . . . It enthralled me'
JESSIE BURTON, multi-million bestselling author of The Miniaturist

'Astonishing . . . a scorching vision of a book'
CHARLOTTE WOOD, Booker-shortlisted author of Stone Yard Devotional

'Incredible'
EVIE WYLD, author of The Echoes

'Bold and unexpected, Rapture buzzes with life and energy . . . Extraordinary'
ROSANNA PIKE, instant Sunday Times bestselling author of A Little Trickerie

The legend is only the beginning . . .
Ninth-century Mainz, in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Agnes is the motherless child of an English priest - a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. But when tragedy strikes, she is suddenly forced to choose between what is expected of her and the life she has always dreamed of. Determined to find her own freedom, she disguises herself as a man, securing a place at the revered Fulda monastery and forever altering the course of her existence.

Thus begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of Fulda, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome. There, she dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge of the old and new languages of Europe, theology and Church law, and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful - and deadly - currency.

And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known - and loved.

About Emily Maguire

Emily Maguire is the author of seven novels and three non-fiction books. Her 2016 novel, An Isolated Incident, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. She was twice named as a Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year, was the 2018/2019 Writer-in-Residence at the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney and the 2023 H. C. Coombs Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University. Emily has an MA in literature and works as a mentor to young and emerging writers.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sonja Rosa Lisa ♡ on November 27, 2021

Gabrielle Fox ist Psychotherapeutin. Seit einem Autounfall vor zwei Jahren ist sie gelähmt und auf den Rollstuhl angewiesen. Nun hat sie seit ihrem Unfall erstmals wieder einen Job, und ihre erste Patientin ist gleich ein äußerst schwieriger Fall. Bethany ist 16 Jahre alt und hat vor zwei Jahren ihr......more

Goodreads review by karen on May 12, 2021

i don't know what my problem is. for anyone else, this would probably be a four- or five-star book, and looking through my friends list, it seems to indeed be the case. and i am thrilled, because i love liz jensen and she gets very little play in this country - most of her books are out of print, and......more

Goodreads review by Erin on January 07, 2010

I'll admit, I have a tendancy to get a little too engrossed in a good book. A powerful story with characters I connect with can actually have a physical impact on me - my stomach churns, my heart races, my palms sweat. That said, after turning the final page of The Rapture by Liz Jensen, I felt like......more

Goodreads review by Sandi on July 19, 2009

While The Rapture isn't one of the greatest books I've ever read, it was an excellent read that gave me characters to care about and ideas to think about. While the story wraps up in a shocking manner, the story itself contains enough ambiguity to leave some things up to the reader's experience and......more

Goodreads review by Traumleser on May 11, 2021

Ich habe das Hörbuch gehört und mir hat es gefallen, wie Andrea Sawatzki vor allem Bethany gelesen hat. Die Geschichte an sich fand ich als Idee gut, aber die Umsetzung und die "Zwischenmenschlichen Probleme der Hauptprotagonistin" fand ich sehr gezwungen und teilweise offensichtlich in die Irre füh......more

Quotes

A spectacular story of shape-shifting, love and faith, as a singular woman journeys into the depth of her soul. A feat to bring such early history to new life, so rich in desire, and so spare in self-pity. It enthralled me

Rapture is a fierce, sexy, heady maelstrom of a book. It sucked me in from the first page - a glittering feat of imagination

Rapture is astonishing - a scorching vision of a book. Drawing on history, legend, speculation and gossip, Maguire's medieval girl-Pope story is made of many things: flesh and earth and blood; ambition and abnegation; rage and transcendence, all pouring into this pagan, biblical, strange and mighty work from an imagination in soaring flight

What an amazing book. It's so beautifully written that I wanted to slow down and savour every sentence, whilst also rushing ahead to find out what happens. It's bursting with earthy and visionary life

Impeccably researched and vividly imagined this is historical fiction of the highest calibre. In Maguire's hands, the legend of Pope Joan becomes a story that women of every generation will recognise: a story of embattled womanhood, forced subterfuge and constant, fear-ridden struggle. Rapture is a reminder of the price women throughout history have been forced to pay in order to fulfil their ambitions, satisfy their intellectual curiosities and to quench their thirst for life. Its tragic end shows just how far the world has gone (and will yet go) to suppress both female intellect and sexuality

Bold and unexpected, Rapture buzzes with life and energy. It is an extraordinary story of womanhood, told so beautifully that I was thinking about it long after I had finished

What an incredible book Rapture is. Profound, frightening and extraordinarily beautiful. It has all the hallmarks of a great thriller - such tension - mixed with the quiet, confident beauty of Agnes' voice - her fury and her love

I adored Emily Maguire's lush, immersive historical novel Rapture Sydney Morning Herald

My book of the year is Emily Maguire's extraordinary Rapture - fierce, wise and magnificent Sydney Morning Herald

Emily Maguire has created an earthy, visceral, and sensual tale, full of devotion, intrigue and passion. Ninth-century Europe feels astonishingly tangible and vivid, and Maguire's protagonist, Agnes, is utterly compelling as she sweeps all before her, treading where no woman has dared venture before. A stunning novel

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