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So finally I finished reading this book after a month 😊 I got distracted by tennis for a couple of weeks and didn't read a word. Before and after that, I was tempted so many times by slim books. I am glad to report that I resisted all those temptations and I told myself that I'm not going to pick up another book till I finish this one, however long it takes. Today, when I finished reading the last page, I was very happy! György Spiró's 'Captivity' runs to around 860 pages and it is my first chunkster of the year. I've read just 13 chunksters in my whole life, including this one (for me, a chunkster is a book which has more than 800 pages), and so it is a big moment for me. This is also the first Hungarian book that I've ever read and so it is one more reason to smile 😊

The story told in the book goes like this. Uri is Jewish, and he lives in Rome at the beginning of the first millennium of the Common Era. He is a Roman citizen. But he is different from other Jewish people around him, because he reads a lot. He spends most of his days in the library. He knows three languages fluently � Greek, Latin and Aramaic � which is unusual for a Jewish person. He has read most of the Greek and Latin classics, and so his way of thinking is very different from the people around him. Sometimes with all the knowledge he has, he questions his own religion. One day his father tells him that he has to go to Jerusalem as part of the annual delegation. It is a huge honour to be chosen as part of that delegation. Uri doesn't want to, because he loves lounging in the library with his beloved books, but he can't say 'No'. What happens during his travels, as Uri goes to Jerusalem, Judaea, Alexandria and other places, and how he is an eyewitness to the great historical happenings of his times, and how that changes his life forms the rest of the story.

'Captivity' brings alive vividly that period of time at the beginning of the first millennium, when a lot of fascinating things happened. György Spiró has done a lot of research and the story feels real and authentic because of that. We learn a lot about the history of that period, which is fascinating. None of the Roman emperors come out as good � they all become crazy at some point, killing people indiscriminately. The scenes describing war and filled with killing were hard to read � particularly hard to read was the part about the 'Bane in Alexandria' which was very violent. My favourite parts were the quieter ones, for example, when Uri is reading a book to a group of illiterate women in the Judaean countryside, who listen to him reading and discuss the story while they are doing their work. György Spiró's prose is spare and functional and does the job well. There are occasional doses of humour which makes us smile. The pace of the story is not even throughout, which is to be expected of a book of this size. In some places, the history overwhelms the story, and sometimes the Machiavellian machinations of the Roman emperors and politicians are a bit too much for our simple minds. But I'm glad I read through them, because it inspired me to read more on Roman history.

I enjoyed reading 'Captivity'. I'm glad and proud to have finished it 😊

I discovered György Spiró's book through an article about giant translated novels that make a mockery of subway reading 😊 I got many of the books mentioned in the article, but this is only the second one I've read. (The first one I read was Minae Mizumura's 'A True Novel'). I don't know anyone else who has read György Spiró's book (except for Hungarian readers who made it a bestseller). Wish more people read it and enjoy the experience.

Have you read György Spiró's 'Captivity'? What do you think about it?