Mine eyes have just read the best novel of the year

Quentin Letts’ Nunc! is a beautiful, moving and funny exploration of life, death and first century Jewish cuisine.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

A book cover shows a cartoon man sitting on the title text while a dog sits below.

Historical fiction is my favourite genre of novel. Make it biblical historical fiction and you’ve sold me before I’ve cracked the spine! I bought a copy of Quentin Letts’ NUNC! without having read a single review or knowing anything about it… and what a sensible decision it was. Letts has produced a novel that combines his rapacious satirical wit, theological and historical acumen, and a beautiful sentimentality – the novel is dedicated to his brother Alexander, who died of cancer.

It is inspired by the words of the Nunc Dimittis, as translated in the Book of Common Prayer. Sung by Simeon, as he holds the Christ child in his arms, they are words that are full of joy, because God has promised Simeon that he will not die until he has seen the Messiah. “Lord, now lettest thou now thy servant depart in peace,” it begins: words that are spoken or sung at every Evening Prayer in the Church and have provided hope and comfort for generations.

The novel opens with the character of Symons (no, I didn’t misspell it), a titanic literary concoction of corduroy, wax jacket, and mild middle-aged irritation, who lives in a classical English cathedral town. He receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. He has an argument with his wife, Anne (the typology is strong in this novel). He gets pissed. As he totters home from his local wine bar, he passes the cathedral and is captivated by the sound of singing.

Upon entry he realises the choir is rehearsing the canticles for Evensong. He hides behind a pillar and kneels down in a pew. The Nunc Dimittis is rehearsed, and the heady combination of high emotion and fine wine sends him into a prayerful stupor. We are transported to first century Jerusalem and spend most of the rest of the novel in the company of Simeon and a cadre of his friends, acquaintances, and opponents.

What follows is a series of hilarious vignettes, featuring a wide array of brilliantly sketched characters. Spending much of our time in ‘Deuteronomy Square’ we meet Rueben the tea seller, Tambal the slave (who has a fondness for Roman cuisine and a horrid aversion to gefilte fish), Noor the mad garlic seller, Jonah the hypocritical Pharisee, and Shlomo the dog. Through them, and many others, Letts allows the reader to explore the social, political, religious, and dietary life of the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

The humour never vanishes, the confessional power never overwhelms, the lightness of touch is always present; and yet the novel takes on a new intensity...

How did the Judeans feel about the Romans? Were there ever friendships between Jew and Gentile oppressor? How did the average man or woman feel about Herod? What was their attitude to a priestly and religious hierarchy? Were the Wise Men buffoons? Letts weaves such themes through a narrative laden with the humour and heart-warming episodes that mark the best ‘slice-of-life’ writing. The people of first century Jerusalem might be separated from us by time, space, language, culture, and cuisine, but their highs and lows, their gripes and loves, their daily search for happiness and meaning, are no different to ours.

Underpinning the story is Simeon’s daily watch for the promise of the Christ. Letts has ten verses from the Gospel of Luke as a foundation to build his protagonist, and four of these are a song. Undeterred, Letts uses Simeon as a cypher to explore further and deeper themes: youthful indiscretion, regret, passion, love, shame, faith, doubt.

Letts also allows for a certain frisson of imaginative licence to round out his back-story. What was Simeon’s profession? Who were his parents? Did he know Anna the Prophetess? Why had God given him this task of watching and waiting, praying and hoping? Never overexplaining or labouring the point, Letts grants the reader a few moments of memory and introspection from the old man, but otherwise invites us to understand Simeon through his daily dealings with those around him.

By the end of the novel we have not only one of the funniest characters of modern fiction, but one of the most spiritually and emotionally complex. I prepared to leave Simeon – encountering Mary, Joseph, and the infant Christ – feeling as if he was a member of the family.

Letts concludes the novel with Simeon’s great biblical performance: ten verses which suddenly take on a remarkable poignant weight. The novel quietly switches gear to become a theological meditation worthy of any spiritual writer. The humour never vanishes, the confessional power never overwhelms, the lightness of touch is always present; and yet the novel takes on a new intensity and seriousness that took me by the hand and led me to look upon the mystery of life, death, truth, beauty, and goodness.

It took me a while to make it through the final two chapters…my eyes kept misting with tears.

If you only read one novel this year, please let it be NUNC!

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Review

Books

Culture

Freedom

Politics

11 December 2024

1 min read

All this can be yours: the momentum that drives mafia states

Once abhorred opinions gain traction among the distracted nursing grievances.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

Preisdent Putin stands behind a lectern with a gold door and Russian flag behind him.

What is Putin thinking?

Is there a new Cold War today? This assumption, spurred by the war in Ukraine, is challenged by Anne Applebaum in Autocracy, Inc. (Penguin Random House, 2024). Instead, she argues, there is a growing group of autocratic nations where ruling elites exercise staggering levels of corruption, accumulating wealth, eviscerating the common good and suppressing any meaningful dissent. There is rule by law rather than rule of law, where the courts become the means by which brutal, cynical state power is employed to destroy and imprison opponents.

The Cold War was underpinned by ideology, but autocratic states today support one another through logistics, resources and propaganda despite big differences in outlook. Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, China, Russia and Zimbabwe, to name a handful of autocratic nations, share little by way of common ideology, except the desire of their dictators to stay in power, both to ensure their wealth and to protect themselves from legal action. The fig leaves of religious beliefs and nationalism are often used in different combinations but fool few.

If there is a common denominator for these autocracies, it is the wish to scrap the post-war settlements – the institutions and laws that have marked global affairs since. The body of existing international law is a particular target, as its dismantling immunises dictators against judgment.

Framing the present global picture in clear, criminal terms like this is helpful. Mafia states exist, and they are growing in influence. But it is too easy for others to place themselves on the side of the angels. These kleptocracies have been enabled by corporate bodies elsewhere. In the UK, London is host to lawyers, accountants, bankers and PR experts who have helped to launder money for corrupt elites. They argue their support is legal, but it is also amoral; such is the professional framework of some of the biggest names in law and finance. London’s property market, like several other global capitals, has been grossly distorted by the laundering of foreign money, to the detriment of working people trying to afford their own homes.

At the end of the Cold War, there was a widespread sense that liberal, democratic values had prevailed and it only remained for this dye to leak into the fabric of remaining nations. Not only is this not true today, if anything the momentum is with autocratic values infecting democracies with their ways. The global technology revolution has assisted this, as once abhorred opinions and positions gain traction in the minds of distracted people with grievances, real or imagined.

There is a special hypocrisy when criminals who have stolen billions and murdered thousands claim to speak for God.

The late Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, said the key question for the new century was: who speaks for God? If the suggestion was that this is a question different religious traditions need to answer in ways that support our common humanity, we now have no shortage of dictators who say they speak for God. Their claims that other regions of the world are godless and degenerate are made time and again. Like Goebbels, they know that the endless repetition eventually wears people down until phrases become believable. No-one who cares about God’s character would claim their society reflects his character well; there is injustice, hatred and violence everywhere. But there is a special hypocrisy when criminals who have stolen billions and murdered thousands claim to speak for God.

When Jesus faced his life-defining temptation in the wilderness, the devil showed him the kingdoms of the world and promised they would be his if he ‘turned’. He also tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread. Power and wealth, the very trappings coveted by the world’s dictators. And his final temptation: to throw himself from the roof of the Temple, only to be saved by the angels. To surround himself with a loyal cadre of officers sure to protect his interests at all times.

Instead of the highway to autocracy, Jesus took the uneven and winding path of service to others. One of self-denial, deprived of the material wealth made available by his elevated position. This is the human standard we have been set and it compels self-reflection, not boasting and threats.