The latest addition to my website is György Spiró‘s Fogság (Captivity). This mammoth novel – 865 pages – is set at the beginning of the first millennium A.D> and follows the story of Uri, Jewish but living in Rome and a Roman citizen.Unlike most boys of his age, he does not help his father because of poor eyesight and other physical ailments but spends his time reading. However his father gets him sent on a delegation to Jerusalem , in return for a generous loan which will never be repaid. We follow his adventures first in Jerusalem, where he is imprisoned, and elsewhere before he goes to Alexandria where he meets a few important people before returning to Rome where he finds his father has died and he has to pay off his fater’s large debts. Rome is in turmoil with mad emperors and the rise of the Christians. `Though not a Christian he is accused of being one and expelled from Rome. He returns after an amnesty and, as before, is on the fringe of power but with problems of his own. This is an excellent portrait of an era which those of us brought up in the Western Christian tradition might know from a different pwespective.