01
Bread and Freedom
The Peasants’ War places hunger, class and the violence of political authority at the center of the historical world.
About the Novel
Two people
against the order
of their age
The novel opens in the forests near Erlangen among men who survived the defeat at Frankenhausen. Hunger, suspicion and grief have replaced the confidence with which they once followed the promise of revolt. Even the meaning of escape has become uncertain.
In Coburg, death is being organized with bureaucratic precision. Sixty-three condemned rebels are to be executed. Zingara witnesses the hanging of the miller Jörg Preyl, and the image follows her back into the castle, turning political violence into intimate memory.
The narrative also moves to Wittenberg, where Martin Luther and Katharina marry while the Reformation and the Peasants’ War reshape the religious and political order around them.
Then a quieter revolution begins. In a shoemaker’s workshop, Zingara asks for red shoes. Matthias kneels to fit them. Their eyes meet. Nothing spectacular has happened yet, but the reader knows that the smallest gesture may become more dangerous than a battle.