Quarantine book by Jim Crace

Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year and a Booker Prize finalist.

Two thousand years ago four travellers enter the Judean desert to fast and pray for their lost souls. In the blistering heat and barren rocks they encounter the evil merchant Musa — madman, sadist, rapist, even a Satan — who holds them in his tyrannical power. Yet there is also another, a faint figure in the distance, fasting for forty days, a Galilean who they say has the power to work miracles... Here, trapped in the wilderness, their terrifying battle for survival begins...