Names of the Women

'Dazzling' MARLON JAMES, BOOKER PRIZE WINNER 'Original and thought-provoking' SPECTATOR 'Electrifying' TESSA HADLEY Under a predawn sky, humming with starlight and the songs of birds, a group of determined women return to the cave where they have laid the body of their saviour. When they arrive, it is empty. Names of the Women tells the stories of fifteen women whose lives overlapped with the life of Christ. Women who stayed with Christ through the crucifixion, when his disciples had abandoned him, and who spread his radical message - one that made them equals and a profound threat to power within the church. Together, the voices of the women dare us to reimagine the story of the New Testament in a way it has never before been told. *A 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND NEW STATESMAN*

JEET THAYIL was born in 1959 into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala, and educated at Jesuit schools in Bombay, Hong Kong and New York. Kerala's Syrian Christians trace their church to St. Thomas, who arrived on the Malabar coast around 50 AD and converted thirteen Hindu families to Christianity, or so tradition has it. Jeet's grandmother, Chachiamma Jacob, was the last of the family who recited from memory the hour-long service in Aramaic, Malayalam and Sanskrit that still defines the faith.