Jeet Thayil

Names of the Women is an extraordinary work of restoration, playful invention, and stark beauty.

Theologically well-informed, imaginative and affecting . . . This is a fascinating and beautiful book. You most certainly do not have to be either a Christian or a feminist to appreciate it.

Achingly beautiful. Powerful, poetic and profoundly feminist.

Jeet Thayil's Names of the Women enacts a long-overdue reinstating of female voices in the story of Jesus . . .

Thayil sheds absorbing light on a period when women of all classes were disregarded . . . [Names of the Women is] executed with real empathy and aplomb.

Original and thought-provoking . . . This is a bold and beguiling addition to the canon of New Testament fiction.

Names of The Women unerases the erased, gives voice to the silenced, restores the lost, and brings dazzling, smouldering life to stories long left for dead. It is literally a tale that's waited a thousand years to be told.

Marlon James, Winner of the 2015 Booker Prize

An electrifying new treatment of the old story; haunting, mysterious, intelligent.

It's fascinating to be reminded how little we properly understand one of the foundational stories of western civilisation. And there are moments where the much-pondered events are reframed in a new light.

Women from the New Testament are given a voice and their side of the story in this richly imagined but impressively researched novel. Thayil's knowledge and rootedness in the biblical world is palpable on every page.

'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

Praise for Names of the Women

Names of the Women is an extraordinary work of restoration, playful invention, and stark beauty.

Bold and compelling.

Theologically well-informed, imaginative and affecting . . . This is a fascinating and beautiful book. You most certainly do not have to be either a Christian or a feminist to appreciate it.

Names of the Women is an extraordinary work of restoration, playful invention, and stark beauty.

Bold and compelling.

Theologically well-informed, imaginative and affecting . . . This is a fascinating and beautiful book. You most certainly do not have to be either a Christian or a feminist to appreciate it.

Names of the Women is an extraordinary work of restoration, playful invention, and stark beauty.

Bold and compelling.

Theologically well-informed, imaginative and affecting . . . This is a fascinating and beautiful book. You most certainly do not have to be either a Christian or a feminist to appreciate it.

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