AustLit

'From the best-selling author of The Hand that Signed the Paper, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, comes a sensational epic novel.

'784 ab urbe condita-31 AD. Jerusalem sits uneasily in a Roman Empire that has seen an industrial revolution and now has cable news and fl ying machines - and rites and morals that are strange and repellent to the native people of Judaea.

'A charismatic young leader is arrested after a riot in the Temple. He seems to be a man of peace, but among his followers are Zealots and dagger-men sworn to drive the Romans from the Holy Land.

'As the city sinks into violence, the stage is set for a legal case that will shape millennia - the trial of Yeshua Ben Yusuf. Intricately imagined and ferociously executed, Kingdom of the Wicked is a stunning alternative history and a story for our time.' (Publishing summary)