Who knew there was so much blood & guts spilled over the anabaptist heresy? This 768-page page-turner never lacks for action as the title character, a shady Vatican secret agent, plays cat and mouse with Gert of the Well, his opposite number on the Protestant side. Along with your history lesson you get proto-communism, free love, bank fraud, crypto-jewery, backstabbing, book-binding, Venetian whoring, and vivid ultra-vi in various medieval European locales. If they ever make a movie of this one...

Q by Luther Blissett is a wondrous novel. Set in the 16th century during the first decades of the Reformation, it follows two characters: an Anabaptist, member of the Radical Reformation – a movement that advocated greater spiritual and political change – and the mysterious Q, a spy for the Cardinal behind the reawekening of the Inquisition, Giovanni Pietro Carafa - the future Paul IV. The result is a thoroughly well researched romp, filled with religious imagery and speech, action, sex and well...

I smile. No plan can take everything into account. Other people will raise their heads, others will desert. Time will go on spreading victory and defeat among those who pursue struggle.There is a scene in Alan Bennett's History Boys where the instructor tells his students, if you want to know about Stalin you should study Henry VIII. I felt similar illustrations throughout this sprawling epic. Recurring tensions and responses proliferate through history. Well over a month was spent with Q, a mon...

The cold war between pro-capitalist and pro-communist spooks is trasplanted into the killing fields of Reformation Holy Roman Empire by the collective of writers known as Luther Blisset. The story attempts to follow the careers of a radical protestant and an underground member of the inquisition ("Q") for over 30 years, as they circle and try to dispose of each other. The set-pieces (the battle of Frankenhausen, the revolution in Leyden) are well-told, but most of the characters are not well-def...

This is one of the most challenging books I've read and I vacillated between loving and hating it. So to be fair, I'd really like to give this 3.5 stars but it seemed worthy of rounding up, rather than down.It became obvious very early on in the piece that this book would be very difficult because of my lack of background knowledge of the Reformation and papal intrigues. There is an enormous cast of characters, often bearing similar names (there's more Jans and Johans than you can poke a stick a...

Q tells the story of a Forrest Gump of the reformation age. We never learn the real name of this unsung hero. He's an anabaptist, representing one of the radical arms of the reformation. Whenever something crucial in early anabaptism happens, he's present: Müntzer's peasant upheaval, the synode of the martyrs in Augsburg, the tragedy of Münster in 1635, Jan van Batenburg's apocalyptic riders, Eloi Pruystincks early libertarian commune. He changes identities but is always in the middle of the act...

I noticed this book on a shelf in Waterstones nine years ago. It called to me but the appeal went unheard. I don't know why. The other day I was in Blackwells just idling time whilst waiting for the lunchtime concert to begin at the RNCM... Some books lure you as they spot you from their shelves. They whisper in your head; "I am full of wondrous things... I am full of promise.... you will never forget me". All the great books I've ever read did that to me; a quirky title ("The Name of the Rose",...

Other reviewers have already addressed the plot of the novel so no point in my reiterating. This is a novel that is vast in scope and whilst filled to the brim with historical detail and events it is also a mystery. Two antagonists who circle each other over the span of thirty years, each fighting for their beliefs. This is a complex and convoluted novel and I had difficulty initially until I had some further understanding of the period.I would have liked to have rated it higher simply due to th...

??? 2000s: if you like eco’s name of the rose, you can think of this in comparison as a street-level political thriller rather than a philosophical murder mystery. i love both books. this is notably easy to read in short paragraphs and chapters, but very long, multi-voiced, similar to moby dick. i do not know the details of reformation history but this work seems credible, and it is fascinating that four writers wrote it: everyone had their special realm of expertise, everyone must have collabor...

This book covers the era when Martin Luther nailed up his criticism of the corruption of the Catholic Church, the early 1500's. It was a time when the peasants started to protest their treatment by the brigands, who called themselves nobles, and the torturers who maintained moral and civil law, who called themselves the Church. The entire book is written from the point of a young university student who must change his identity every time he gets in trouble with the two power factions running Ger...

Although this is the second time I've read this book I couldn't recognize any of the story, which is a surprise as it is a brilliant and thoroughly enjoyable read. Set 500 years ago the story is basically about the reformation and the interactions of two men on opposite sides of the religious divide, but the book has more depth than the Pacific Ocean and covers topics from (apart from the obvious religion): Capitalism and Communism; the power of the banks over the ruling powers, not least of whi...

Recommending this book to me was perhaps the high water-mark in Justin's life. He has neither before nor since done a single thing worthy of note by anyone. This book is eclectic, well-written, beautifully disorganized, and other ridiculous things people say about good books. It is in fact a veritable tour de force.

Bettie's Books

More than any other art form, even painting at the height of its 'realist' phase, the novel is tied to the rise of the bourgeois subject. It is for this very reason that fiction writing has tended to lag behind the other arts, and novels are nearly always ascribed to single authors. Indeed, that past master of bourgeois reaction, George Orwell, made books no longer being written by individuals one of the great horrors of his risible dystopia, 1984. In many arts, and only most obviously music and...

Things I liked about this book:- the team of writers has done an amazing lot of research and must have peeped into quite some historical documents to be able to write in such a detailed way. This is also reflected partly in the language. - I learned a lot about a part of history I did not know much about before. What happened in Middle Europe from 1500-1550? Plebs vs. Pope, farmers vs. princes, the Catholic Church vs. various sects... An interesting setting and an interesting time period. Things...

I was surprisingly underwhelmed by this book, a supposed contemporary classic of radical lit/fiction. The jumpy style and narrative bear witness to the multiple authors, with a lack of overall thematic coherence and plot tightness. The characters are two-dimensional, including the protagonist, and very rarely are we moved to identify with any of them. Nor are we given sufficient descriptive detail or contextual political-theological information in order to fully comprehend the stakes of the stru...

“Q“, authored by the Italian writers’ collective Luther Blissett, now morphed to “Wu Ming“, tells the story of Gert-from-the-Well, a young student from Saxony, in the aftermath of the monk Martin Luther’s ninety five theses, pinned on the door of the Wittenberg cathedral church in 1517.I am on my second reading of Q, and have read the “sequel” (a misnomer) “Altai” by the same Wu Ming. Q is, in part, straightforward adventure through the troubled times of the various revolts that then momentarily...

This is a fabulous book - a mixture of history, theological argument, skullduggery, a complex plot with a mystery to solve - Who is Q? (I worked it out halfway through, then decided I had been wrong, then found out I had been right.) This book had me rushing to the internet to look up the people I knew about intellectually but hadn't appreciated their particular brand of obsessive madness. The strange mindset of 16th century fanatical Anabaptists is imagined very convincingly, as is the oppressi...

It's a rare occasion that I read a 700 plus page historical novel, but this one drew me in and kept me turning pages. Written by an Italian anarchist collective under the pseudonym Luther Blisset, its set in the Protestant Reformation, and gives an intense history of the time -- one of the most crucial periods in the birth of quote unquote modernity -- from the perspective of an anabaptist -- a radical non-believer in catholic orthodoxy. Along the way we get a perspective on the beginnings of eu...

This is one of my favourite books. It is set around the time religious nutcases started fighting themselves seriously in Europe, called the reformation. “Let’s translate the bible from Latin into German or English so that normal people can read it. Oh no you can’t do that, let’s burn some heretics.” The world created by the group called Luther Blissets is so complex that it takes a while for the reader to get used to it. But once you in it, you don’t want to leave. And for the people interested

Not the Luther Blisset who played for Watford Town and AC Milan but four Bologna-based writers whose tale of Anabaptist rebellion, Martin Luther's reformation, and papal opposition is told through reports by Q, a papal spy, tracking down a reformation leader and radical activist. Brilliant, powerful, moving, and utterly contemporary. Do not be put off by the seemingly odd subject matter and size of the book: this is engaging and exciting (but do expect some liberties with received histories of t...

Way more then a book. It's a manifestation of power to the people.It really makes radicalism vs. the establishment into a universal timeless theme. The interesting historical perspective only enhances certain philosophies portrayed. I got two interesting messages or morals out of the story, both inter-linked with each other, although it's certainly my own interpretation, likely bias since it coincides with my before-hand opinions, but I honestly found them portrayed in this story. My kind of boo...

Q begins in the midst of a brutal massacre, sinking the reader deep into the mortal conflict between devout belief and passionate rebellion which engulfed Europe during the Reformation of the 1500s. Sparked by the actions of Martin Luther, a mere friar bold enough to challenge some of the most fundamental precepts of Catholicism, what follows are thirty-eight years of brutality and suffering which are effectively brought to a close by a single death, both meaningless and meaningful.Here all

It took over a millenia for the Catholic Church to be seen through. They must have had a good press officer. But see through it they did. Luther wasn't the first, but he certainly hit the headlines when he nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenburg. Basically, Q is a war story. Which quickly moved from a war about ideologies to a class war, the same class war that underlay and still underlies nearly all of human history. Our superhero, the man of many names, moves through the storm wh...

This book had a lot of potential. It was about the Reformation and followed one man as he moved across Europe, starting in Germany, moving to Holland, and ending up in Italy. The man was trying to keep the Reformation alive and constantly sought followers wherever he went. He was dogged by a man named “Q,” who was working for a Cardinal interested in keeping Catholicism dominant over Europe. It was a great premise and parts of it were interesting, but the execution was not as well done as it sho...

A harsh novel set during the Reformation. It was written by a group of Italian Leftists under a pseudonym. An epic if i've ever read one. Goes from Germany to the Ottoman Empire. Lots of research into the events i would imagine. Some interesting speculation as well(though they did go a little wild with it at times. I did some reading about John of Leiden and i don't think he was ever a pimp in the old usage of the word). A little harsh as far as language and imagery but i suppose this was an ext...

This curious product of a shady Italian anarchist collective, named after an ex-Bournemouth, Watford and AC Milan striker intrigued me to such a degrree that I promptly took a holiday in Germany on the back of it. The image of the cage hanging from Munster Cathedral, with its bones of the executed Anabaptists, is one of the strongest images from an incredible novel - one that covers over a hundred years of the history of the reformation with amazing aplomb.

Gripping. Q is to reformation history what Name of the Rose is to early church history! Again, I read this in seminary and I believe a strong historical and theological background may be required to fully enjoy the twists and turns of this novel. Again, a must read!

Q s an eye-opener for me as a Christian, and normally I wouldn't read something as Christian bashing as, say, DaVinci Code, etc., but this book is about world history and the religious wars that took place in the Medieval European period, so anything anti-Christian is easy to overlook, maybe even forgive! (?) It's 16-century Germany, and a humble priest named Gert is challenged by letters from a mysterious man known only as Q to reshape history--if he can! He must endure religious hardships as t...

That was quite good. At first I was really excited because GoodReads recommended it to me because I liked Umberto Eco's books, then I did some reading about the author and started wondering if this was some kind of communist screed (it's not) and then I actually read it and was engrossed.Our hero (who has set aside his birth name long ago) is a part of the Reformation trying to establish Baptist communes and enclaves in northern Germany and the low countries. Along the way the Baptists are conti...