The informing idea of this short novel is a simple historical reversal, whose implications are, however, far from simple. Set in a period and a place suggestive of the late middle ages in Central Europe, but which in a subtly disorientating way belong to a fictional parallel history and political geography, The Godfearer follows the story of the elderly Kobus, a bookbinder. He is suffering blackouts and partial paralysis and is nearing his end. Through his own eyes the reader witnesses the strange, hallucinatory appearances of two small children, a brother and a sister. They wear the distinctive clothes of the ’Christer’, a persecuted people, it slowly emerges, who have retained their obstinate belief in Jesus Christ ever since the Roman Empire adopted Judaism, and in its aftermath, that religion became the dominant cultural force in Europe. Through a series of long-buried memories which the mysterious appearances of the children exhume in Kobus’ confused mind, we relive a poignant story of personal betrayal and public persecution, whose implications as a description of the historical persecution of the Jews of Europe are at one level unambiguous.

At the level of the personal history of Kobus, however, a more far-reaching understanding of the function and the ravages of prejudice and scapegoating emerges, along with a sense of the helplessness of the individual in a world whose cultural politics are obdurately resistant to the conscience and actions of individuals. This story is engaging with strong narrative suspense, but ultimately it is probably most memorable for the challenge it poses to easily assumed liberal and humanistic responses to anti-Semitism and, possibly, by extension, to most other destructive prejudice-based ideologies and social controls. By assuming that a historical reversal would find Judaism as susceptible to the scape-goating of other ’God-fearers’ — as lacking as Christianity has in fact proved to be in mechanisms that might control disastrous excesses — Dan Jacobson has created a bold and, I would argue, profoundly Jewish response to one of European history’s most intractable and destructive dilemmas.

’One old Christer woman died during the riot; several people were injured; a dozen homes set on fire. None of those responsible were arrested. The following day, mild young Kobus along with many others went on a kind of patrol through the Mishkennet; not, as far as he was concerned, to intimidate the Christer still further, but simply out of curiosity, to see what the quarter looked like after such an event... Later that day Sannie and three other Christer girls were taken into custody. "For their own protection", it was said, initially. Several more days passed; then Sannie alone was put on trial. She was charged with practising witchcraft, with trying to seduce Malachi from his faith, with inflicting cruel harm on him. The widow spoke up strongly against her. So did the widow’s children, who had played with Sannie and been cared for by her. Other people, none of them of much standing in the community, soon came forward with tales of what they had seen and heard. Someone had seen Sannie and other Christer girls drawing squares in the dust, throwing stones into these squares, and then taking turns to jump on one leg from square to square: clearly the actions of people engaged in sorcerous rituals of some kind. Another witness had heard Sannie and other girls singing Christer songs at inappropriate times. Sannie had been seen surreptitiously making the sign of the cross with her two forefingers as she passed the House of Prayer...’