This is a crushingly sad story based on the true-life of Vigdis Adelaïs, the well-todo Christian daughter of a Rouen burgher who made the mistake of falling in love with a rabbinic student in XIth century Normandy.

It is also the story of the terror a Pope unleashed in medieval France with a holy war to recover the seat of Christianity, Jerusalem.

And for the talented Flemish author, Stefan Hertmans, it is also the story of uncovering the extraordinary scholarship of medieval Judaism of the huge cache of documents of the Cairo Genizah from which the woman’s story came to light.

The origins and recovery of more than 300,000 texts, fragments, and scrolls is a tale itself worthy of Argentinian master storyteller, Jorge Luis Borges.

Hertmans’ skill interweaving the stories is not to be missed, nor his lush reconstructions of Medieval France and Cairo, where his own wanderings following the woman’s epic quest to recover her children took him.

In Jewish law, no document containing the Lord’s name YAH-WEH could be destroyed, so officials of an old Egyptian synagogue threw their documents into a room called a genizah from which they were to be retrieved by God himself. And they did this for centuries.

Until a couple of amateur archaeologists (twin adult women it so happens) brought the recovery of the documents to the attention of Hebrew scholars in the late 19th century.

The story leads to an extraordinary moment when the author visits Cambridge University and holds in his hand the original letter of protection penned by the chief rabbi of Narbonne for his daughter-in-law that she carried across the land and seas in her ultimately doomed quest to recover her children stolen by Norman Crusaders during a pogrom.

Hertmans reimagines her travels. Stunningly.

The Genizah can be read as a forerunner of our own Internet where billions of documents, photos, and videos may be recovered centuries from now to reconstruct our own time.

If you enjoy this book you will also enjoy Hertmans’ earlier work War and Turpentine, his backhanded homage to Tolstoy. ( )

Meeslepend ( )

I read Hertmans’s War and Turpentine a year or two ago, a remarkable combination of history (World War I) and supposition about the life of Hertmans’s grandfather, a painter. Speaking as a professionally trained historian, both that work and this one—which tells the imagined story of a marriage between a Christian woman and a Jewish man in late 11th century France—are extraordinary works of historical reconstruction. This book is based on fragments of documents nearly 10 years old and rediscovered in Cairo in the last century. Hertmans has not only undertaken immense research but he has the rare gift of being able to tell a captivating story that is filled with academic history in the shape of a novel. He wears his learning very lightly indeed and is a terrific storyteller. It may not be “serious” literature but it’s beautifully done (though, personally, I preferred War and Turpentine, this is a great achievement). (P.S. I should note that Hertmans--at least in both these books--weaves the "story" he is telling with his own story. In The Convert, that means his own (part-time?) residence in France and his driving through the country to follow where his researches lead him in telling the novelistic recreation.) ( )

Combination of historical fiction and non-fiction travelogue. The fictional thread is based on a true story. It starts in 11th century France, where a young Christian woman, Vigdis, falls in love with a young Jewish man. In order to marry, they must flee the area. Vigdis converts to Judaism and changes her name to Hamoutal. The present-day memoir relates the author’s attempt to retrace their steps. It is based on his research and documentation he finds. The Jews were heavily persecuted during this time period.

The narrative alternates between the couple’s journey and the author’s attempt to reconstruct it. It is a story of the violence of the time. The imagined story is full of obstacles, hardships, violence, and anti-Semitism. There are several narrow escapes. It includes the period of the Crusades. The present-day segments read almost like a detective story, and the two threads fit together remarkably well for being written in such different styles. Hertmans offers an analysis of history as well as a comparison of the earlier time period and how it has changed over the years. It is obvious that the author cares deeply for his subject matter. I also enjoyed and highly recommend this author’s War and Turpentine, which is set during WWI. ( )

Ein wirklich ungewöhnliches Buch. Im Gegensatz zu vielen historischen Romanen macht sich hier der Autor auf die Suche nach Informationen über eine historisch belegte Person, die ein Pogrom in seinem Dorf überlebt hat. Nicht nur das Leben, was sie wahrscheinlich geführt hat und das im Wesentlichen aus Flucht und Leid bestand, sondern auch die Gefühle, die die Spurensuche beim Autor auslöst, sind Thema in diesem Buch und haben mich beim Lesen sehr bewegt. ( )