AustLit

'London, 1321: In a small shop in Paternoster Row, three people are drawn together around the creation of a magnificent book, an illuminated manuscript of prayers, a book of hours. Even though the commission seems to answer the aspirations of each one of them, their own desires and ambitions threaten its completion. As each struggles to see the book come into being, it will change everything they have understood about their place in the world. In many ways, this is a story about power - it is also a novel about the place of women in the roiling and turbulent world of the early fourteenth century; what power they have, how they wield it, and just how temporary and conditional it is.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'From a remarkable new Australian author comes The Anchoress, a story set in the thirteenth century within the confines of a stone cell measuring seven paces by nine. Told largely from the perspective of a woman who tries to shut away the world by becoming an anchoress, literally entombing herself for life inside a tiny cell, it tells us so much about how what it is to be human. Tiny in scope, but universal in themes, it is a wonderful, wholly compelling fictional achievement. ' (Publication summary)