I’m not sure I have the words to describe how amazing this book was. I had read about the siege of Masada before, after finding a famous picture of the event or something like that (I haven’t seen another picture of it, though it sounds like an event that would inspire Romantic artists. The story seemed fascinating, so reading about Hoffman’s book as a feminist version of the story, of course I was interested.

So, I finally got time to read it. And oh, my, I loved it.

The story is divided in four sections, each narrated by a different narrator: all of them women, all of them hiding something. All of them desperate in the middle of the Jewish uprising against the Roman Empire in the middle of the 1st century A.D. Life is not easy in a patriarchal world, especially if you’re a woman that wishes for more than a life as a wife or a daughter. It’s very interesting that the first three sections are called “The Assassin’s Daughter”, “The Baker’s Wife”, and “The Warrior’s Beloved”. These women, Yael, Revka, and Aziza, appear to be defined by their relationships to the men in their lives. However, as the narration progresses, it becomes clear that each of them is their own woman. They do not belong to these men, but to themselves. Yael shows herself to be a smart and capable healer, as well as a passionate and kind woman, not at all the mere daughter of an Assassin who hates her. Revka is a quieter character, but her strength and kindness show her to be beyond the limits imposed to her by her role as wife/mother/grandmother. And Aziza’s fighting abilities, passionate and impetuous personality set her apart from other women and even her beloved, who is determined to have her conform to his idea of her, rather as accepting her as who she actually is.

The last section is titled “The Witch of Moab”, and is told by Shirah. She’s an independent and intelligent woman, and thus considered a witch by the people around her. Nevertheless, they are often too happy to call on her when they need help. She ends up in Masada when following the love of her life, her cousin XXXX, and carrying her children: willful Aziza, sweet Nahara, and young Adir. It is under her wing that the other women begin working in the dovecotes, an important role for the community inside the sieged city, as the doves provided some communication with the outside, some food in case of famine (which of course happened during the siege), and fertilizer for the small crops they were able to grow. Shirah is also passionate, as the other women of the dovecotes, and passes her passion on to her daugthers. Aziza, Nahara, and Yael, who becomes an adopted daughter to the Witch of Moab as the novel goes on. She brings them all together and guides them to surviving the siege.

Of course, the story has a famously grim conclusion. Almost everyone inside Masada died, preferring (as the legend goes) to kill themselves rather than fall into Roman hands. Better to die than to become slaves or be killed. That scene is where the whole novel builds up to, and it’s one of the first times the war becomes part of the forefront. Throughout the first half of the novel, besides the sections telling of the women’s escapes towards Masad, the war is almost a background for the tragedies of these women’s lives. That helps to highlight the idea of Masada as a safe haven, despite the dangers of the war. But once it’s clear that there’s no turning back and the war is coming to Masada, the novel unravels towards its inevitable conclusion. Death and love become intertwined in the last chaotic days of the city, as the Roman army approaches the doomed city. The final pages go quickly, in a blur of violence and blood.

The writing in the whole book is utterly fantastic. Alice Hoffman has a way with words that makes you fall right into the story and never want to leave. I read a review that joked about how modern the characters’ concerns seemed to be in the book (sexual agency, independence, gender questioning), which apparently made them sound like present-era women inserted in 1st century Judea. The thing is that all the accounts we have of those days are through the eyes of men. There are no sources that reflect the way in which women saw and represented themselves, which of course means we have no idea how they sounded. We have no idea what their concerns were, or what they desired. Alice Hoffman is giving them a voice, even if it’s mediated through a modern woman. At least it’s an attempt to say that there were women (yeah, it’s shocking to learn that women didn’t appear fully formed in the 90s), and that those women had lives which the men surrounding them couldn’t even imagine. After all, the public and private spheres of life were more separated than in later centuries. And it’s a fascinating story, full of magic and power. Alice Hoffman is a master of her craft and it shows all over the book, especially in the way the different women talk, it’s not hard to see who the narrator is and how they are different from the others. And that’s a pretty hard thing to accomplish when writing from four different points of view.

Would I recommend it? A thousand times yes. Even if there are historical inaccuracies (as in, there’s people today who aren’t quite sure the mass suicide even happened, as there’s only one source on it, and he wrote it from the account of the two women who hid to survive the massacre).

P.S.: Do yourself a favour and never glance at the awful miniseries. Seriously, not even the grace of the lovely Cote De Pablo makes up for the horror of this adaptation. Same goes for the Red Tent series. What even was Iain Glen doing in that?