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Now this is how you write a gripping book.

Quarantine is what you might call a novel of ideas. It seeks to give an account of Jesus' forty-day sojourn in the desert and to explain how Christianity (or, if you will, the cult of Christ) came into being. While it's not overly blasphemous, it does present its theories in a way to which people who take the New Testament very literally might object. See, for one thing, Crace's Jesus is not the Son of God, but rather a clumsy and all too human carpenter who takes his faith more seriously than his work; for another, he is not actually the main character of the novel, nor even its most interesting character. That honour goes to Musa, surely one of the most fascinating villains in twentieth-century literature.

Quarantine is about the (apparently common in Biblical times) act of quarantining -- i.e., secluding oneself in the desert for a while to meditate and commune with God. Jesus is only one of several characters who, on the first day of the story, arrive in an inhospitable part of the wilderness to take up lodgings in some barren caves and begin meditating. He's different from the other quarantiners, though. While the others only fast during the day and aren't averse to talking to each other when not meditating, Jesus is determined not to eat or drink anything for forty days and to stay completely on his own. But before he retreats into his cave, he touches a dying man, Musa, who promptly recovers. Needless to say, Musa is convinced Jesus is a miraculous healer, and tries to get him out of his cave to talk. But Jesus refuses, believing Musa is a devil come to tempt him. And so a fascinating battle of wills begins, which quickly works its way to a haunting (and remarkably plausible) conclusion.

Crace is a fabulous writer. His metaphor-laden prose has a breath-taking, occasionally hallucinatory quality (especially in the marvellous second half of the book), and his descriptions of pretty much anything are superb. His Judean desert is an exciting place, so vivid it almost becomes a character in itself. His descriptions of fasting and what it does to one's body and mind are terrifying. (Trust me, after reading this book you'll never consider hunger striking again.) Yet it's the characters who steal the show. Jesus' struggle against temptation and hallucinations is rendered impressively, and rather more realistically than the stories told about this in the Bible. But while Jesus is important to the story for the effect he has on the other characters, he is not the most riveting character in the book. That would be Musa, a tyrannical merchant with a frightful sense of entitlement and very little compassion for anyone, let alone a bunch of afflicted souls who have come to the desert to pray. He's a nasty piece of work, is Musa, but Crace has drawn him so well that you find yourself fascinated by his exploits, even when he sets out, over the course of several pages, to plan the rape of the lone woman among the quarantiners (some of the most riveting prose I've ever come across). No, Musa is not Satan, but it's easy to see why Jesus believes he is. He's rotten to the core, which makes what he does on the final page of the book all the more extraordinary. I found myself glued to the pages whenever the story was told from his point of view, admiring Crace for the skill with which he brought his antagonist to life without making you want to close the book in disgust. The other perspectives are less impressive, but still entirely worth reading. Crace can draw characters in just a few lines, and his way with words is such that the effect is quite dazzling. He is quite the storyteller.

So. Do seek this book out, people. Don't believe the baffling number of three-star reviews on this site; instead, check out the plethora of five-star reviews on Amazon.co.uk () and remember that Quarantine was voted the Whitbread Novel of the Year and short-listed for the Booker Prize. Then read the book. I promise you you won't regret it.