Note for Note (Another Pentateuch) Book 3: Harvest

Book 1 (Plough) followed an exiled individual's search for inner coherence in an incoherent and violent world more than 1000 years ago. Book 2 (Growth) witnessed the establishment of a sustainable harmony between a community and the land upon which they had lived for three or four centuries but within and beyond which community were the seeds of its own decay. Book 3 (Harvest) shows a far more developed and structured society, which comprises several clear levels, from the rulers and the priesthood who impose order, through the artists, artisans, and peasants, down to the untouchables, the people of the mud, about whom it is forbidden to even speak. The story follows three main characters: Kimi, the principal courtesan of the ruler; Nohbul, the ferryman, and his family who had fallen from grace and seek to re-establish themselves in a state of grace; and Seth, a mute. The society comes under threat from external, and foreign, influences and from the volcano, The Blameless, in the shadow of which the society had evolved.