Their website is Translated from the Italian by Shaun Whiteside The four pseudonymous authors of Q live in Bologna, Italy.

Part thriller, part novel of ideas, Q is as richly imagined as Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose or Iain Pears's An Instance of the Fingerpost and as subversively political as Michel Houellebecq's Atomised. Across the chessboard of Europe, from the German plains to the flourishing Dutch cities and south to Venice, what begins as a struggle to reveal each other's identity eventually becomes part of a much greater mission: total annihilation of the enemy. Our hero, an Anabaptist who travels under many names, and his enemy, Q, a papal informer and heretic hunter, play a game in which no moves are forbidden. While sixteenth-century Europe is devastated by the wars of religion following the Reformation, a young theology student adopts the cause of the heretics and the disinherited. The characters in Q bleed real blood, blood that was still soaking Europe in the trenches of World War I, and the firestorms of World War II.' - The New Republic 'It is hard to do better than this vivid, terrifying portrait of a survivor of the Protestant Reformation. What begins as a personal struggle to reveal each other's identity becomes a mission that can only end in death.įrom the Back Cover ' is a historical novel of the grand and sweeping sort, one that aims to capture not a life or a moment, but an era of pivotal importance.'-Washington Post Book World

About the Book In this brilliantly conceived literary thriller set in the chaos of the Reformation-an age devastated by wars of religion-a young theology student adopts the cause of heretics and the disinherited and finds himself pursued by a relentless papal informer and heretic hunter.īook Synopsis In 1517, Martin Luther nails his ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral, and a dance of death begins between a radical Anabaptist with many names and a loyal papal spy known mysteriously as 'Q.' In this brilliantly conceived literary thriller set in the chaos of the Reformation-an age devastated by wars of religion-a young theology student adopts the cause of heretics and the disinherited and finds himself pursued by a relentless papal informer and heretic hunter.

Q by Luther Blissett