English: Year of Wonders

This useful guide provides an outline of the themes and motifs of Year of Wonders.

Alfred Hickling is stunned by Geraldine Brooks' tale of the black death village that sacrificed itself for the health of a nation, Year of Wonders

In Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks eerily captures every aspect of life during the plague the gruesomely painful death, the speed with which the disease spread and the superstitions surrounding it, which rivaled the plague itself for horror.

Ever since Patrick Süskind's ''Perfume,'' one flourishing branch of historical fiction in Europe and America has tended toward the lurid and the gothic. Characterized by lyricism, blood, earthiness, miracles and the utmost of weather and affliction, today's costume dramas prefer costumes fouled by bodily fluids.