Homo Sum

by Georg Ebers Book 3 in the Roman, Christian and Early Islamic Egypt series.

First published 1878

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2.5(5)

In the Sinai Peninsula during the fourth century, Christian hermits seek holiness in a landscape that offers isolation without freedom from human desire, pride and conflict. The novel brings ascetics, travellers and local communities into contact, testing the distance between severe religious ideals and the needs of ordinary people.

Rather than treating early monastic life as a simple retreat from the Roman world, Ebers shows a community still shaped by family ties, danger and argument over what Christian virtue requires. The desert setting gives the story both spiritual intensity and the practical pressures of survival.