![]() ![]() His spy and catspaw in the village, Father Barnabas, preaches to ensure that the villagers remain docile and compliant.Įvents take a dark turn in Lapvona when Marek impulsively murders Villiam’s son Jacob and Jude coldly delivers him to Villiam for judgment. Marek is convinced that suffering is a mark of God’s favour and ecstatically embraces the brutal beatings he regularly receives from Jude.įor these characters, religious faith seems to provide an elaborate way of justifying their existence, as it also does for Villiam, who believes his power and luxury to be a sign of divine favour. Jude’s religiosity manifests as a grim asceticism he has far greater reserves of compassion and sympathy for his flock of lambs than for people. We soon learn that both Marek and his father are devoutly religious, albeit in different and disquieting ways. Born with physical disabilities, Marek exists on the fringes of this isolated community, which is ruled over by its decadent lord Villiam from his distant hilltop manor. ![]() ![]() Its nominal protagonist is the shepherd boy Marek, who lives near the village of Lapvona with his father, Jude. Set in a medieval Eastern European fiefdom and narrated from a distant third-person perspective, Lapvona has the tone of a ghoulish fairytale. It features murder, starvation, cannibalism, rape and poisonings, among other horrors. It follows the conflicts and tribulations of a cast of stupid, selfish characters. This underscores the one element that critics seem to agree on: Lapvona is not exactly an uplifting novel. ![]()
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