A literary sensation in Hungary, György Spiró’s Captivity is a gripping page-turner, a masterful historical epic, and a riotous road novel. Set in the tumultuous first century A.D., Captivity recounts the adventures of Uri, a bookish, hapless, young Roman Jew.

Frustrated with his feeble-bodied son, Uri’s father sends the young man to the Holy Land to bolster the family’s prestige. Suspected of spying in Jerusalem, Uri is imprisoned by Herod and shares a cell with Jesus (whom Spiró reimagines as a balding, middle-aged man) immediately before his crucifixion. Later, in cosmopolitan Alexandria, Uri undergoes a radical spiritual and carnal awakening before barely escaping a pogrom. Back in Rome, he joins the fight for justice on behalf of Alexandria’s butchered and displaced Jews. The campaign embroils Uri in the murderous, conspiratorial, and sex-fueled world of Imperial politics and gives him a front-row seat to the megalomaniacal reign and downfall of the emperor Caligula.

With the scope and pathos of Robert Graves’s I, Claudius, and the sly satire of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Captivity is equal parts Homeric epic, brilliantly researched Jewish history, and picaresque adventure, combined into an unforgettable dramatic tale of fate, family, and fortitude.