The work of recording
Iustus is a young monk-scribe from the west. His introduction offers a different point of entry from a soldier’s contract or the work of a farm.
A scribe’s presence invites a reader to think about what becomes a record. Someone must choose the words, arrange the account and decide which details seem worth preserving. Those are useful questions to carry into a novel concerned with the space between remembered stories and recorded history.
This file leaves Iustus at that starting point. The meaning of what he sees and does is part of the experience of reading the book.
A question to carry
What might be lost when an experience becomes an account of an experience?