The Basilisk - Miriam Herin

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Résumé :
12th Century Europe was a time of ferment and change as Crusaders returning from Palestine brought with them innovative ideas in architecture and art, medicine and science. Newly available translations from the ancient Greeks invigorated learning and philosophy and led to the rise of the university. The formation of towns and a growing merchant class loosened the bondage of serfdom and the medieval system of feudalism, furthering technical innovation and a broader prosperity. The Basilisk, a novel set in the first half of that century tells the story of three historical figures, two of whom were giants of that era, the brilliant philosopher Peter Abelard and his antagonist, the powerful mystic and Christian reformer Bernard of Clairvaux. The novel's third historical character is Abelard's mistress and wife, Heloise, considered in her own right as one of the most significant women of that time. The author surrounds these extraordinary personages with a cast of fictional and historical characters, whose own stories help recreate the remarkable age in which they lived, a period in history known to us today as the 12th Century Renaissance....

Biographie:
Miriam Herin's first novel Absolution won the 2008 Novello Literary Award and was cited by Publishers Weekly as an impressive debut that skillfully combines a contemporary courtroom thriller with a subtle look back at the competing passions and pressures of the Vietnam War era . . . Herin delves deep into questions of guilt and forgiveness while demonstrating a gift for the nuances of personal interactions. Her second novel, A Stone for Bread, published by Livingston Press of West Alabama University, received a starred Kirkus review through the Kirkus Indy program and was cited by Kirkus as an Indy Best Book of the Year for 2016. That same year, it was nominated for North Carolina's prestigious Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction and was featured in The North Carolina Literary Review in a joint review with authors Robert Morgan and Terry Roberts. In 2020, that novel won the Eric Hoffer Legacy Award for Fiction, which placed the novel on the short list for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize.