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Emily Maguire Author Letter - Rapture

  • Writer: Allen & Unwin
    Allen & Unwin
  • Nov 15, 2024
  • 1 min read

Updated: Nov 18, 2024

Read a letter penned by Rapture author Emily Maguire.

Rapture by Emily Maguire

In this letter, author Emily Maguire reveals the inspiration behind Rapture, a novel born from the mystery of a legendary female pope and her journey to bring this enigmatic figure, Agnes of Mainz, to life.


 

Dear Reader, Around a decade ago I heard the medieval story of a female pope and was instantly obsessed. A brilliant, passionate girl who disguised herself as a boy, followed her lover to a monastery, travelled the world and, eventually, ended up on the throne of St Peter? Amazing. I needed to write her story. So I began to research and found that the more I read, the less I knew. Scores of sources written over almost a millennia and none agreed on the details. Forget the details; her very existence was hotly contested. Disappointed at my inability to find the ‘real’ story, and increasingly intimidated by the idea of writing a historical novel, I let the idea go. Time passed. I wrote a number of books set, more or less, in the here and now. Then it was March 2020 and the world became a bad horror novel, both terrifying and tedious. Wanting nothing at all to do with either here or now, I returned to those old notes on a woman who, if she lived at all, did so far away and very, very long ago. This time the haziness of her story made it all the more attractive. I saw that the gaps and disagreements were delicious opportunities for invention. This woman who may or may not have existed, and if she did, may or may not have been English or German, beautiful or plain, saint or succubus, brilliant scholar or gifted seductress, was the perfect vehicle for exploring the things that I had been thinking and writing about for twenty years: identity, ambition, faith, patriarchy, sex. As I wrote, this vehicle—this thousand year-old cipher—became Agnes of Mainz, a flesh-and-blood woman of ingenuity, resilience and passion. A woman who, I came to understand, was blessed (or depending on your perspective, cursed) with absolute certainty about her purpose. She was one of those rare, irresistible people capable of ignoring externally imposed labels that can so easily overrule a person’s inner pulse of desire, their sacred knowledge of self. Happily, Agnes rubbed off on me. She had to; it was the only way she could get written. Any time my doubt about moving from contemporary to historical fiction crept in there she was. Whose nonsense labels are these? I imagined her saying, staunch and thrillingly dismissive. There is a story to be told and a writer on fire to tell it. What further permission is needed? I hope you enjoy Rapture. With every good wish, Emily Maguire ©Sarah Wilson Photography

 

Rapture by Emily Maguire

Rapture

by Emily Maguire


An imaginative and audacious historical novel from the best-selling author of Love Objects and An Isolated Incident.




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