My Way to Canossa

By: DavId Brendan O'Meara

Narrated by: David Brendan O'Meara

Thoroughly absurd and yet all-too-real, My Way to Canossa follows four journeys that re-imagine the Middle Ages amid the political and technological changes of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

It isn't an historical novel. It's an exploration of how the present uses the past.

In 2009, an American history buff discovers a way to experience medieval history in the company of the original participants. He flies to Germany, rents a minivan, picks up his passengers in Speyer, and drives them across the Alps—to Canossa Castle in Tuscany. The novel weaves the history buff’s blog together with investigations into three bad histories of the same journey:

• A Canadian self-help book for men, with roots in the anti-Semitic movement of late 19th century Germany.
• An ultra-Catholic biography of a warrior princess, marketed to teenage girls.
• A pop-feminist telenovela full of wish fulfillment fantasies.

©2009, 2016, 2024 David Brendan O'Meara (P)2024 David Brendan O'Meara