The Martyrs

In the spirit of Aldous Huxley’s famed novel The Devils of Loudon, Tono Rondone’s fourth and latest novel, The Martyrs, is a fictional recreation of the historical battle that was waged between pagans, early Christians and members of the Roman Empire in the third century after the coming of Christ. Against the exotic backdrop of ancient Syria in the Mediterranean, it’s the story of Cyprian, an accomplished black magician and sorcerer, Justina, a young pagan virgin girl devoted to the goddess Aphrodite and the Roman Emperor Diocletian, once a common soldier, who launched the largest and most devastating persecution of the Christians ever recorded in history.