The crown of England is left in the hands of a mere boy, the future Richard II, and the great nobles gather like hungry wolves round the empty throne. A terrible power struggle threatens the country, and one of London's powerful merchant princes is foully murdered within a few days of the old king's death. Coroner Sir John Cranston and Dominican monk Brother Athelstan are ordered to investigate. As others associated with Springall are found dead, Cranston and Athelstan are drawn ever deeper into a dark web of intrigue...

    As Dante ascends the Mount of Purgatory toward the Earthly Paradise and his beloved Beatrice, through "that second kingdom in which the human soul is cleansed of sin, " all the passion and suffering, poetry and philosophy are rendered with the immediacy of a poet of our own age. With extensive notes and commentary prepared especially for this edition."The English Dante of choice."--Hugh Kenner."Exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths."--Robert Fagles, Princeton University."Tough and supple, tender and violent . . . vigorous, vernacular . . . Mandelbaum's Dante will stand high among modern translations."-- "The Christian Science Monitor"

    Jack Straw is rare and admirable in its uncompromising, unpatronizing identification with a peasant—an intelligent, vulnerable man caught up in the dream of equality that flared into the Peasant Revolt. The novel lets the reader stand at that crossroads of politics and mysticism and see 1776, 1848, 1917, Tiananment Square—the same dream, the same betrayal. A very moving, honest book."Kirkus Reviews: "A fast-paced, intriguing account of the failed Peasant Revolt in 14th Century England: First-novelist Zelitch provides a rendering that is evocative and plausible as well as convincing in its historical sweep...Zelitch offers a satisfying variety of incident, with enough texture and historical detail—costume, festivity, songs—to evoke the medieval milieu. The Middle Ages are rendered not on silver plattersor thrones but on the dusty roads and straw beds of peasants, who are given center stage here, not limited to comic relief."The Confession of Jack Straw won the Hopwood Award for Major Fiction.