The story follows to nameless individuals - both known only by the pseudynyms and aliases, who are battling for the future of the Reformation. One, Q, is a spy for a Catholic nobleman, whose letters to his lord are obsequious but detailed insights into the radical Reformation movement. He is deployed to cause havoc, spy and undermine the radicals and the authors are able to use this to explore different aspects of the Reformation. Q is there to encourage the Peasant leaders into the trap at Frankenhausen, there to lead the troops into Munster to overthrow the radical anabaptist commune and there to send rebels, radicals and others to their doom.
Our other hero is there on the opposite side at all of these events, organising the defences and Munster, helping Thomas Munzter escape the slaughter at Frankenhausen and helping organise a confidence scheme to steal millions from the Fugger banks. Our two characters weave and interweave past each other, never meeting until the end and neither quite succeeding in their ultimate aims.
And its the aims that make this book so interesting. This is a novel that wears its politics on its sleeve. I first encountered it among the activists who were organising around the anti-capitalist movement in Genoa. The collective that forms "Luther Blissett" were activists and intellectuals around the important Italian movement. Their reading of the Reformation and the Peasant War in particular owes a great deal to radical interpretations of those events, including works by figures such as Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky and Ernst Bloch. In his detailed discussion of the novel and its themes the Marxist Roland Boer argues that Q is "deeply consonant" with Kautsky's work. But even a cursory reading of Q reveals that it owes much to the histories that emphasise the radical, bottom up nature of the German Reformation and Peasant War.
This is most obvious when the authors quote from the radicals of the time, or describe life in Munster and the speeches of Muntzer. But also in the sections set in Antwerp, where radical Christians are living in a Commune where "all things are in common" and sexual freedom, as well as communal politics are practised. This is particular interesting because it is here that our hero, as opposed to Q himself, encounters the reality of capitalism. The docks at Antwerp allow the authors to play with colonialism, and the use of tobacco by several of the characters is a constant reference to the new economic order that is developing.
The world of Q is brilliantly painted, dirty, violent and in turmoil - but so is the sense of a world in transition, a capitalist world evolving in the belly of the old, and the old order no longer fitting the needs, interests and ideas of the people who live in it. The rebellions are shaped by different people striving to shape a new world, their class interests determining what they want. The religious radicals want a world of equality, freedom and justice. The rich want to stay rich, and have the freedom to make money.
Interestingly the final section of the book, set in a brothel in Venice allows the authors to draw out more of this. Our hero's joint role as manager and bouncer is a neat metaphor for the threat of violence that hides behind every capitalist system. The brothel itself is run in a communal way, giving the women protection, but still geared towards separating the rich from their cash.
All in all Q is a book of many parts. Part historical, part spy novel it is also a polemical work that puts the case for radical ideas and communal living. It is also audacious, sexy and violent and a more thrilling novel set during the German Reformation it is hard to imagine.
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