A brilliant reconstruction of an incredible journey across medieval Europe to Egypt, and an untold story of forbidden love.

In the small village in Provence where Stefan Hertmans has made his home, people have long spoken of an ancient pogrom and hidden treasure. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, an extraordinary collection of Jewish documents was found in a synagogue in Cairo.

Hertmans has based The Convert on these historical sources, tracing the life of a young Christian noblewoman who abandoned everything for the love of a rabbi's son. In this startlingly contemporary novel, Hertmans follows in her footsteps as the lovers flee through France together, pursued by crusading knights, and recounts her dazzling journey full of love and hardship, courage and hate, as she journeys on towards Jerusalem alone.

The Convert brings the chaos of the Middle Ages to life with boundless imagination and stylistic ingenuity, portraying the tragic love story of a woman in exile and a world in flux.

Enthralling... A spectacular tale told with spectacular accomplishment -- Peter Kemp * Sunday Times, *Books of the Year* *
[An] astonishing tale... The main narrative is told in a pressing, insistent present tense and Hertmans conjures up the medieval world with the same sensuous detailing that was so effective in War and Turpentine... tense and compelling... The Covert is...extraordinarily good * Sunday Times *
An imaginative flight, full of darkness and light, lively characters, life-altering conflicts, violence and kindness -- Valerie Martin * New York Times *
Written in an often breathless, continuous present tense, Hamoutal's experiences are visualised following Herman's own groudbreaking researches... David McKay's translation is as brilliant as it is frequently brutal, and intermittently lyrical * Jewish Chronicle *
Nearly a millennium later, Hamoutal has been remembered and honored -- Sam Sacks * Wall Street Journal *

Stefan Hertmans is the prizewinning author of many literary works, including poetry, novels, essays, plays, short stories and a handbook on the history of art. He has taught at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, at the Sorbonne, and at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin. His first novel to be translated into English, War and Turpentine, was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, and was chosen as a book of the year in The Times, Sunday Times, and The Economist, and as one of the ten best books of the year in the New York Times.