The Book of Rapture. Nikki Gemmell

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       Introduction

       What we know, and what we don’t, about this mysterious document

      The Book of Rapture was originally written in Latin, a universal language unused in this day and age. Why? We can only speculate. Did the author want to obscure, to some extent, the content from her captors? Did the author want to mask her identity and indeed nationality? Did the author resist the idea of her words being pinned down — and thus marginalised — by place, religion or date? Indeed, the text could have emanated from any number of countries over the past century, from communist Eastern Europe to rightist regimes in South America to dictatorships in Africa or South-East Asia. It is obvious that names have been changed; all we can conclude, with precision, is that a woman wrote it.

      It was handed to the Chief Philologist of the British Library by a man who described himself as a social worker, with an interest in children. On the front of the handwritten manuscript, bound in string, was a pink slip of paper with Prisoner Number 57775 typed upon it. The pages themselves bear the markings of a remarkable journey. Some are torn, some are bloodstained.

      The social worker explained that a child, who was with two others, had lifted the manuscript from her suitcase and had handed it to him ‘with an arresting gravity’. When asked what the bundle was, the youngster had replied, in a whisper, ‘It is the words that roar.’ The man said that the girl herself did not read Latin, and this in itself is a mystery: was the child aware of the document’s contents? Was she connected to the protagonist, СКАЧАТЬ