First published 2003
Saint Josephine exists in the space between sacred and profane. Is she a holy woman blessed with miraculous powers, or is she a prostitute who finds her joy in earthly pleasures? Perhaps she embodies both extremes at once. The novel explores her life and death through multiple stories that offer different interpretations of who she might have been. These tales weave together accounts of other saints who defied convention: one-armed mad girls, beauties locked in towers, seductive daughters who refused to know their place. Roberts constructs a world where love, morality and desire collide in uncomfortable ways. The father-daughter relationship at the story's heart reveals forbidden pleasures alongside deep pain. Each version of Josephine's story asks whether she found ecstasy in religious devotion or in carnal knowledge. The novel refuses easy answers about female sanctity and sexuality.
Genres: fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: multiple-perspectives, unreliable-narrator
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
304 pages · Paperback · Imge Kitabevi
Content warnings: sexual-content