Forest Lovers

The year is 1066, or thereabouts, in a southern Italian forest where Christian cloisters meet pagan desire and the old gods still breathe through the trees. The Countess Isabel rules her domain with a will that scandalizes the Church, while the scheming Abbot of Holy Thorn plots to bring her to heel. Into this wild world come Isoult, the woman called La Desirous, a name she bears without shame, and the charismatic Prosper le Gai, a knight whose charm is matched only by his recklessness. Their desires tangle across the forest's green aisles, complicated further by the mysterious Galors and the question of what separates Christian man from beast. Hewlett writes with a sensuality that was radical for 1898 and still provocative now, his medieval world is one of raw hunger, both spiritual and physical. This is not a nostalgia-drenched chivalric tale but something far more dangerous: a story that asks whether civilization is merely a veneer over something older and far more honest.