Pilgrims

'An enthralling and wonderfully vivid novel from a master storyteller' - Joseph O'Connor

'Kneale's medieval world is animated with a refreshing lightness of touch' - Sunday Telegraph

1289. A ragtag band of pilgrims sets off on the dangerous journey from England to Rome, where they hope their prayers will be answered. Each traveller has a very different reason for going. A poor villager is convinced his beloved cat is suffering in the fires of purgatory; a farmer fears he'll go to hell for cheating his neighbours; his social climber wife wants to show off her pilgrim badges at church; a mother believes her son's illness is punishment for her own adultery; a landlord is in trouble with the church because he punched an abbot on the nose, and a noblewoman wants to divorce her brutal husband and marry her new beau. While some are motivated by piety and others by greed, they all seek the same thing: salvation - from hell, or from each other.

A novel filled with vividly drawn characters, Pilgrims is a delightful, comic portrait of medieval society, which reveals the fallibility of humans, the absurdities and consolations of belief, and the violence at the heart of religious fervour.