Cover of The Water Trial
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The Trial of Water (Grijalbo), the new historical novel by the Alicante writer Juan Francisco Ferrándiz, is an exciting story full of adventures, intrigues, mysteries and conspiracies about the resurgence of Roman law in Spain and the changes that this entailed for medieval society , among others, the impulse of the economy of port cities such as Barcelona, where a large part of the plot is located. The action takes place throughout the last three decades of the 12th century, in the middle of the Middle Ages, one of the darkest times in our country, when feudal laws still prevailed, where the concepts of equity and justice were a chimera and to settle the innocence or guilt of someone resorted to sacrifices and ordeals or divine judgments – in force until the end of the Middle Ages and the restitution of Roman Law -, which always favored the nobles and left the weakest and most impoverished to their fate. the society.
On an impeccably documented historical basis, which will allow the reader to discover numerous curiosities about the world of Law – something that Ferrándiz masters well since he is a lawyer by profession -, the author composes a fiction starring the peasant Robert de Tramontana, the Condemned, future Legum doctor, doctor of Laws in the city of Barcelona –who will be influenced by the school of the Jurisdiction of Jaca and that of the glossers of Bologna, the germ of the University–, and Blanca de Corviu, the legitimate heir to the Olèrdola castle, which is you will be deprived of all your feudal rights. Both characters will be irretrievably united from the beginning of the plot by the unfair and “divine” judgment of the water to which they were subjected as children and which left them serious physical consequences. In fiction, Ferrándiz mixes elements of the historical novel, the epic of great adventures, the travel chronicle, and the tension and suspense of the thriller; all this seasoned with some brushstrokes of romantic story that serve to relax the frantic rhythm of the action and show a universe, the feminine, which at that time remained on the margins of the future of society and to which the author seems to want to pay a small tribute in the novel.
Juan Francisco Ferrándiz
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Juan Francisco Ferrándiz (Alicante, 1971) has a degree in Law and currently practices as a lawyer in Valencia. His novel The Dark Hours (Grijalbo, 2012) was a successful debut in epic narrative and earned him a position among the best-known authors on the national literary scene. His later works, The flame of wisdom (Grijalbo, 2015) and La tierra maldita (Grijalbo, 2018) confirmed his name as one of the most important in historical fiction in Spanish, also internationally recognized with his books translated into eleven languages . @JuanFFerrandiz
Title: The Water Judgment
Author: Juan Francisco Ferrándiz
PVP: 21,90 €
Page # 672
Publication Date: March 4, 2021
Also in Catalan, El judici de l’aigua
(Rose of the Winds )
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