The Physician's Proof: Seville and Cordoba, 1415 to 1420

Seville, 1415. A jar of olive oil could hang a family.

In the year following the Disputation of Tortosa, which has driven thousands to the baptismal font, Ishaq still practices medicine to patients of three faiths. His reputation rests on methods he learned from Arabic texts and Jewish teachers, the same transmission the Translators of Toledo once made possible. He has not converted. He has not fled. He believes the new suspicion will pass.

When a converso family is accused of secretly practicing Judaism, and the evidence is a jar of olive oil found in their kitchen during Lent, Ishaq is asked to testify. He knows the oil is medicinal. He can prove it. But to do so, he must open his own books, name his own teachers, and place himself under the same watchful gaze now fixed on his converted neighbors.

The Physician's Proof is the opening volume of The Century of Silence, a trilogy of fifteenth-century Spain from Ricardo Gómez, author of The Andalusian Covenant. Drawing on Galenic medicine, Sephardic history, and the precise legal shape of early informer culture, the novel asks what it costs to save one family when saving them means exposing yourself.

Perfect for readers of:

Noah Gordon, The Physician

Stefan Hertmans, The Convert

Maria Dueñas, The Heart Has Its Reasons

Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book