The extraordinary new novel from David Flusfeder. 'John the Pupil' is a medieval road movie, Umberto Eco seen through the eyes of Quentin Tarrantino, recounting the journey taken from Oxford to Viterbo in 1267 by John and his two companions, at the behest of the friar and magus Roger Bacon, carrying a secret burden to His Holiness Clement IV. As well as having to fight off ambushes from thieves hungry for the thing of power they are carrying, the holy trio are tried and tempted by all sorts of sins: ambition, pride, lust - and by the sheer hell and heaven of medieval life. Erudite and earthy, horrifying, comic, humane, David Flusfeder's extraordinary novel reveals to the reader a world very different and all too like the one we live in now.

‘A joy’ Philippe Sands ‘Glorious’ David Spiegelhalter A fascinating, enchanting and personal look at the meaning of luck, and the way in which it has shaped our shared history and continues to inflect our day to day lives. What does it mean to be lucky? How might we mitigate the effects of bad luck and maximise those of good? Is there really such a thing as ‘luck’ at all? To answer these questions, David Flusfeder sets out on a quest that will take him across the world and through history. Travelling from Siberia to Versailles, from his father’s life in war-time Poland to Nietzsche on the slopes of Vesuvius, Flusfeder investigates some victors of luck and those who were defeated by it. In following him, we find ourselves confronting who we are and how we might choose to live. ‘Thrilling, intelligent and wilfully unique … I loved it’ James Runcie, author of The Great Passion ‘Ruminative … page-turning’ TLS ‘Fascinating … An eminently enjoyable and engrossing page-turner’ The Jewish Chronicle