The Secret Magdalene (book)
First edition Random House cover.
|
|
| Author | Ki Longfellow |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Feminist novels, Alternate history, Historical novels, Mystery fiction, Metafiction |
| Publisher | Eio Books |
|
Publication date
|
March 2005 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 448 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 156691502 |
| 813/.6 22 | |
| LC Class | PS3612.O533 S43 2007 (to be reclassed to PS3562.O499) |
| Preceded by | China Blues Chasing Women Stinkfoot: An English Comic Opera |
| Followed by | Flow Down Like Silver The Woman Who Knew the All Houdini Heart |
The Secret Magdalene, American Ki Longfellow's third book, was published in 2005. The historical novel challenges the traditional view of events chronicled in the New Testament, specifically the ministry of Jesus Christ and his relationship to Mary Magdalene. It is told entirely in the first-person voice of Mariamne.
A hardback edition was published by Random House in 2006, followed by a trade paperback edition published by Three Rivers Press, a Random House imprint, in December 2007. It has been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Czech, Chinese, French and Icelandic. It is a tale of Mariamne's quest to understand the gnosis she experienced as a child.
Longfellow said she based the book on her studies of translations of historic Jewish and Arabic texts, as well as on modern Biblical scholarship. A selected bibliography is included.
The story begins in the voice of the Jewess Mariamne as a child living a privileged life in her widowed father Josephus’ home in Jerusalem. Also living with them is her father’s ward, Salome, an Egyptian, the daughter of a deceased fellow merchant. Both girls are overseen by a body servant named Tata. Mariamne has just recovered from a life-threatening illness. When she revives, she is gifted (or cursed) with unexpected voiced divination. Raised like sisters and indulged by a fond father with books and lessons usually only accorded boys, Mariamne and Salome possess a thirst for knowledge, both secular and magical, that is forbidden to females. Through their devoted personal slave, they also learn worldly experience far beyond anything Josephus, a member of the elite Jewish Sanhedrin, would approve.
...
Wikipedia