WAR OF THE POOR

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021, here is a dazzling piece of historical reimagining. It is a revolutionary sermon, a furious denunciation of inequality. The fight for equality begins in the streets. In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation launched an attack on the privilege and the Catholic Church, but as it rapidly became an established, on bourgeois authority itself. Rural labourers and the urban poor, who were still being promised equality in heaven, began to question why they shouldn't have equality here and now on earth. There followed a violent struggle and out of this chaos steps Thomas Müntzer, a complex and controversial figure who sided with neither Martin Luther, nor the Roman Catholic Church. He addressed the poor directly, encouraging them to ask why a god who apparently loved the poor seemed to be on the side of the rich. In his bold cinematic style, Éric Vuillard tells the story of one man whose terrible and novelesque life casts light on the times in which he lived, a moment when Europe was in flux. He draws insights from this revolt from nearly 500 years ago which remain shockingly relevant to the dire inequalities we still face today. 80 short and poignant pages of this epic moment known as the Peasants' War.