Graham Joyce is a bright star of modern British literature, a subtle psychologist and master of a fascinating plot, an author who, according to the eminent Jonathan Carroll, writes exactly those books that we spend our whole lives hoping to find, but very rarely find. He masterfully dissects fears and intra-family hatred, delicately depicts the smoldering eroticism and a vague sense of threat. “Requiem” was one of the first in fiction - eight years before Dan Brown with his “The Da Vinci Code” - a rethinking of the themes and motives stated Michael Baigent, Richard Lee and Henry Lincoln in their cryptohistorical study The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. So, after the tragic death of his wife in an accident, school teacher Tom Webster comes from the English countryside to Jerusalem, where his old friend Sharon lives. Soon the holy city - the living embodiment of history, burdened with the burden of centuries-old love and hatred - begins to work its usual magic on Tom: it will either throw up fragments of the Qumran scrolls, which are being hunted by all the intelligence services and churches of the world, or make him see genies and allegedly hear Mary Magdalene herself. , setting out a story different from the gospel...