So begins Jim Crace's Quarantine, a huge literary sensation when it was first published in Great Britain last year, winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, and a finalist for the Booker Prize. Hailed as "extraordinary," "dazzling," "passionately imagined," and "absolutely compelling," it tells the story of five wandering souls, each making the arduous journey into the desert to fast and pray for 40 days. Among them is Gally, a mysterious and frail young man who accidentally heals a dying merchant after stumbling upon his campsite. His curative powers quickly revealed as the Messiah's work, Gally is lured by his fellow travelers -- led by the recovering merchant -- to leave his cave and break the quarantine. With lyricism and a vivid eye for detail, Jim Crace re-creates the harsh Judean landscape where Jesus famously tested