Watermark: A Novel of the Middle Ages

by Vanitha Sankaran

Overview

“Watermark is a powerful novel about the destructive forces unleashed by ignorance and superstition.  Readers will care deeply for the courageous Auda.”
—New York Times bestselling author Sharon Kay Penman

 

Watermark is a magnificent debut by Vanitha Sankaran—an atmospheric and compelling novel about the search for identity, the power of self-expression, and value of the written word, set during the dark days of the Inquisition in Medieval France. Readers who were captivated by The Illuminator by Brenda Rickman Vantrease or Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book will be enthralled by this thrilling journey to a colorful and dangerous past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061849275
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/13/2010
Pages:	331
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Vanitha Sankaran holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Antioch University. Her stories have been published in various print and online journals. In addition, she is a founding editor for the literary journal flashquake. She is at work on her second novel, which is about printmaking in Renaissance Venice.

What People are Saying About This

Sharon Kay Penman

“Watermark is a powerful novel about the destructive forces unleashed by ignorance and superstition. Readers will care deeply for the courageous Auda, who finds love where she least expects it, in the shadow of the Inquisition.”

Laurel Corona

“A story that will keep the reader up at night...”

Editorial Reviews

Watermark is a powerful novel about the destructive forces unleashed by ignorance and superstition.  Readers will care deeply for the courageous Auda, who finds love where she least expects it, in the shadow of the Inquisition.” — New York Times bestselling author Sharon Kay Penman

“This debut historical ... has potential for book club discussions and will appeal to readers of medieval historical fiction.” — Library Journal

“A story that will keep the reader up at night...” — Laurel Corona

Sankaran deftly illuminates a time of intellectual darkness in this superbly rendered debut. — Booklist

“Sankaran has created a likable, easy-to-root-for protagonist in Auda.” — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

A story that will keep the reader up at night...

Laurel Corona

Sankaran deftly illuminates a time of intellectual darkness in this superbly rendered debut.

Booklist

Watermark is a powerful novel about the destructive forces unleashed by ignorance and superstition.  Readers will care deeply for the courageous Auda, who finds love where she least expects it, in the shadow of the Inquisition.

New York Times bestselling author Sharon Kay Penman

Sankaran deftly illuminates a time of intellectual darkness in this superbly rendered debut.

Booklist

"Watermark is a powerful novel about the destructive forces unleashed by ignorance and superstition. Readers will care deeply for the courageous Auda, who finds love where she least expects it, in the shadow of the Inquisition."

New York Times Best-Selling Author - Sharon Kay Penman

Medieval France is no place to be born albino: when Auda emerges from the womb “undercooked” and “white as bone,” an ignorant healer's apprentice tears out the child's tongue to keep her from “spread[ing] the devil's lies.” Though her mother dies in childbirth, a small stroke of luck graces Auda's childhood: her father makes his living as a scribe and a papermaker, so she learns reading and writing to compensate for her inability to speak. Together, father and daughter work to make his experimental paper the new standard for France's writing stock (replacing parchment); against the odds, they field an order from the local vicomtesse, who then takes on Auda as her personal scribe. At the palace, Auda grows more independent and finds romance with an artist who saves her from a witch-hunting mob. When Auda begins writing potentially heretical verse about women's empowerment, however, she tempts fate and the inquisition, setting off a chain of unlikely events. Though improbable plot twists detract, Sankaran has created a likable, easy-to-root-for protagonist in Auda. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

When Auda is born with albinism in the medieval city of Narbonne, her nurse believes the infant's appearance makes her prey for the devil and mutilates the child before Auda's father, a literate papermaker, can rescue her. Rendered mute, Auda learns her father's craft and becomes a scribe for local nobility, but finding a legacy of a troubadour's verses to copy sets her to writing on her own. In 1320s France, paper is beginning to provide an affordable alternative to expensive parchment, but its use is watched with suspicion by the Church. As the demand for paper grows with Narbonne's diverse population of Jews, Italians, Gypsies, and other travelers, it also brings the papal Inquisition to town looking for heretics. Auda's encounter with the Good Men, Cathar prefects persecuted by the Inquisition, climaxes with the flood of the river Aude. VERDICT Avoiding being either overly dark or sweet, this debut historical by an author who already plans a second novel about printmaking in Italy has potential for book club discussions and will appeal to readers of medieval historical fiction who enjoyed Brenda Vantrease's The Illuminator.—Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, Wichita P.L., KS

Library Journal