Wiliam Owen Roberts
Pestilence
A Novel

An Arab would-be assassin traverses the nightmare landscape of medieval Europe….

In the 14th century, the Black Plague literally threatened to destroy Western civilization. This is the setting for the two interlocking stories of Pestilence that vividly convey the flavor of the times: the saga of a young Arab out to avenge his family by assassinating the king of France, and a small town in rural Wales. In his bizarre journey through the Boschian landscape of Europe, Salah Ibn al Khatib encounters whores, rogues, clergymen, and kings; but the plague follows wherever he goes. Lust, violence, disease and despair are the elements of this historical fantasy, written with the flair of an Umberto Eco or Salman Rushdie.

Roberts convincingly and movingly portrays the thoughts and actions of characters far removed from us. But the value of Pestilence lies primarily in its writing, not its research: it is the story of humanity at its most basic, of a time when profound despair swept through Europe. Faced with all consuming fears — the belief that the wrath of God was at hand, and that evidenced by plague wrought death and destruction — and the basic struggle to survive, peasants and bishops alike found themselves joined in the danse macabre. Through this riotous, hellish mix marches the honorable assassin, Salah, a deadly but principled emissary from a civilized land. On Salah's picaresque journey, he will encounter love sublime and perverted, and thanks to his unswerving dedication to his strange mission, he will indeed find himself at the brink of regicide …

"This pellucid, brilliant novel charts the deadly progress of the Black Death, or bubonic plague, across 14th-century Europe.… This is Roberts's second novel, but the first translated from the Welsh. Wiliam Owen Roberts gives this medieval cast their place in history, giving the unsung their song. The novel is meticulously researched, a Brueghel painting come to life … Until now, the biggest possible audience for this fine, sardonic and agitated novel has been half a million: the total number of Welsh speakers. It will now spread like wildfire, or plague, among you …" —New Statesman

Born in 1960, Wiliam Owen Roberts lives with his wife and three daughters in Cardiff.