Blood Of The Martyrs (Canongate Classics)

Written in 1938-9, the novel contains many symbolic parallels to the rise of European fascism in the 1930s and the desperate plight of persecuted minorities such as the Jews and the left-wing activists with whom Naomi Mitchison personally campaigned at the time.

Reviews

... when a novelist is historically faithful in these treacherous waters of the human psyche, the results are tremendous. As a twentieth-century woman, it no doubt hurt Naomi Mitchison a good deal to describe the savagery of the early Christian persecution in The Blood of the Martyrs ... But it is the pain that gives the history its lifeblood. The imagination that is a novelist's fuel must be harnessed to serve history as history was, not as anyone wishes it had been.