The past is as urgent as ever
Finished reading: The War of the Poor by Eric Vuillard 📚
This incendiary novella - only 66 pages long - burns so fiercely it felt like a bomb was about to go off in my hand. With amazing economy the author, Eric Vuillard, brings to life the brief, violent career of Thomas Müntzer. He makes the past as vivid as an execution, and renders the urgency of the past fully present. The Peasants' War, so distant in time, is now.
“Müntzer is thirsty, hungry and thirsty, terribly hungry and thirsty, and nothing can sate him, nothing can slake his thirst. He’ll devour old bones, branches, stones, mud, milk, blood, fire. Everything.”
Gripping.