The War of the Poor - Paperback

by Éric Vuillard (Author), Mark Polizzotti (Translator)

International Booker Prize Finalist
The Spectator (UK): Best Book of the Year

From the award-winning author of The Order of the Day, a powerful account of the German Peasants' War (1524-25) that shows striking parallels to class conflicts of our time.

In the sixteenth century, the Protestant Reformation launched an attack on privilege and the Catholic Church, but it rapidly became an established, bourgeois authority itself. Rural laborers and the urban poor, who were still being promised equality in heaven, began to question why they shouldn't have equality here and now on earth.

There ensued a furious struggle between the powerful--the comfortable Protestants--and the others, the wretched. They were led by a number of theologians, one of whom has left his mark on history through his determination and sheer energy. His name was Thomas Müntzer, and he set Germany on fire. The War of the Poor recounts his story--that of an insurrection through the Word.

In his characteristically bold, cinematic style, Éric Vuillard draws insights from this revolt from nearly five hundred years ago, which remains shockingly relevant to the dire inequalities we face today.

Author Biography

Éric Vuillard is an award-winning author and filmmaker who has written ten books, including Conquistadors (winner of the 2010 Prix Ignatius J. Reilly), and La bataille d'Occident and Congo (both of which received the 2012 Prix Franz-Hessel and the 2013 Prix Valery-Larbaud). He won the 2017 Goncourt Prize, France's most prestigious literary prize, for The Order of the Day (Other Press, 2018). Born in Lyon in 1968, he now lives in Rennes, France.

Mark Polizzotti has translated more than fifty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, André Breton, and Raymond Roussel. A Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the recipient of a 2016 American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature, he is the author of eleven books. He directs the publications program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.