The War of the Poor

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021

The fight for equality begins in the streets.

From the internationally bestselling author of The Order of the Day: Eric Vuillard once again takes us behind the scenes at a moment when history was being written.

The history of inequality is a long and terrible one. And it's not over yet. Short, sharp and devastating, The War of the Poor tells the story of a brutal episode from history, not as well known as tales of other popular uprisings, but one that deserves to be told.

Sixteenth-century Europe: the Protestant Reformation takes on the powerful and the privileged. Peasants, the poor living in towns, who are still being promised that equality will be granted to them in heaven, begin to ask themselves: and why not equality now, here on earth?

There follows a violent struggle. Out of this chaos steps Thomas Muntzer: a complex and controversial figure, who sided with neither Martin Luther, nor the Roman Catholic Church. Muntzer addressed the poor directly, encouraging them to ask why a God who apparently loved the poor seemed to be on the side of the rich.