Belonging

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE

Selected as a Book of the Year 2017 by theDaily Telegraph,Mail on SundayandObserver 'A glittering gemstone of a book'The Times The Jewish story is a history that is about, and for, all of us. And in our own time of anxious arrivals and enforced departures, the Jews search for a home is more startlingly resonant than ever.

Belongingis a magnificent cultural history abundantly alive with energy, character and colour. It spans centuries and continents, from the Jews expulsion from Spain in 1492 it navigates miracles and massacres, wandering, discrimination, harmony and tolerance; to the brink of the twentieth century and, it seems, a point of profound hope.

It tells the stories not just of rabbis and philosophers but of a poetess in the ghetto of Venice; a boxer in Georgian England; a general in Ming China; an opera composer in nineteenth-century Germany. The story unfolds in Kerala and Mantua, the starlit hills of Galilee, the rivers of Colombia, the kitchens of Istanbul, the taverns of Ukraine and the mining camps of California. It sails in caravels, rides the stage coaches and the railways; trudges the dawn streets of London, hobbles along with the remnant of Napoleons ruined army.

Through Schamas passionate telling of this second chronicle in an epic tale, a history emerges of the Jewish people that feels it is the story of everyone, of humanity.

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. His award-winning books, translated into fifteen languages, includeCitizens,Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt's Eyes,A History of Britain,The Power of Art,Rough Crossings,The American Future, The Face of BritainandThe Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE - 1492).

His art columns for theNew Yorkerwon the National Magazine Award for criticism and his journalism has appeared regularly in theGuardianand theFinancial Timeswhere he is Contributing Editor. He has written and presented more than fifty films for the BBC on subjects as diverse as Tolstoy, American politics, andThe Story of the Jewsand is co-presenter of a new landmark series on the history of world art,Civilisations.

Unfolding across many continents and five centuries, this is an epic story - one of suffering, music, light, unfathomable darkness and, most of all, of hope. Here is a passionate history of a world by one of our greatest historians.