You are a human animal. You are a very special breed, or you are the only animal, who can think,

who can reason, who can read. Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

The sound of the show today is a little bit unusual.

I'm taping in a dormitory of Downing College in Cambridge.

I'm at the Cambridge Seminar on the Contemporary British Writer,

sponsored by the British Council.

And my first guest today is Jim Crace.

His newest novel is Quarantine.

His previous novels include Continent,

which is actually a book of interrelated short stories,

a gift of stones, Arcadia,

and Signals of Distress.

Many of them have been published in America and paperback as well as hardcover.

Quarantine is to be published by Farras Strauss and Giroux.

Now, some of us already know of quarantine because when John Updike reviewed the Norman Mailer book of the story of Jesus,

he mentioned that the book really contemporary, among many,

including Reynolds Price's translations, to tell this story in both an imaginative and naturalistic way,

to imagine a potential life of Jesus or such a figure,

the book would be quarantined by my guest, Jim Kras. And I wanted to begin by asking you, the book seems to have an odd mixture of the possible and the farcical, actually, it seems to me.

There is an odd sense in this book that miracles are a form of farce.

And so when Jesus heals the first man he heals... that miracles are a form of farce.

And so when Jesus heals the first man he heals,

...