The War of the Poor

Resumen del libro

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021'A dazzling piece of historical re-imagining and a revolutionary sermon, a furious denunciation of inequality' - The judges of the International Booker prize. The fight for equality begins in the streets. From the internationally bestselling author of The Order of the Day: Eric Vuillard once again takes us behind the scenes at a moment when history was being written.

The history of inequality is a long and terrible one. And it's not over yet. Short, sharp and devastating, The War of the Poor tells the story of a brutal episode from history, not as well known as tales of other popular uprisings, but one that deserves to be told.

Sixteenth-century Europe: the Protestant Reformation takes on the powerful and the privileged. Peasants, the poor living in towns, who are still being promised that equality will be granted to them in heaven, begin to ask themselves: and why not equality now, here on earth?There follows a violent struggle. Out of this chaos steps Thomas Muntzer: a complex and controversial figure, who sided with neither Martin Luther, nor the Roman Catholic Church.

Muntzer addressed the poor directly, encouraging them to ask why a God who apparently loved the poor seemed to be on the side of the rich. Eric Vuillard tells the story of one man whose terrible and novelesque life casts light on the times in which he lived - a moment when Europe was in flux. As in his blistering look at the build-up to World War II, The Order of the Day, Vuillard 'leaves nothing sleeping in the shadows' (L'OBS).

Biografía del autor

Éric Vuillard (Lyon, 1968) es autor, entre otras obras, de Conquistadors (2009), que obtuvo el premio Ignatius J. Reilly 2010, y Tristeza de la tierra (2014), premio Joseph Kessel 2015. En su obra 14 de julio (premio Alexandre-Vialatte 2017) narró con pasión el día de la toma de la Bastilla. Con La batalla de Occidente, sobre la Primera Guerra Mundial, mereció el premio Franz Hessel 2012 y el Valery-Larbaud 2013, y con La guerra de los pobres quedó finalista del Booker Prize Internacional. El orden del día, obra merecedora del presti gioso Premio Goncourt 2017, que narra las bambalinas del ascenso de Hitler al poder, mereció el aplauso de los lectores y de la crítica: Una fulgurante obra maestra (Mercedes Monmany, Abc Cultural); Sus reverberacio nes sobre el presente son escalofriantes (Antonio Loza no, Quadern de El País); Recibirán el impacto de una verdad que no se puede coger, porque es un cuchillo sin mango (Francesc-Marc Álvaro, La Vanguardia); Una novela que galopa la historia agarrada a las crines, sin silla de montar (Manuel Rivas, El País Semanal); Un artefacto literario tan potente que hace estallar la con ciencia cívica del lector (Jordi Amat, Cultura/s de La Vanguardia).