Books
3 Best Novels About the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the Sephardic diaspora
Bestselling authors first, then star rating.
Phase
Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Sephardic Diaspora
1492–c. 1700 CE
In 1492, the Catholic Monarchs ordered Jews in their kingdoms to convert or leave. The decree followed the conquest of Granada and formed part of a wider programme of religious consolidation enforced through monarchy, church authority and inquisitorial pressure.
The expulsion scattered Sephardic Jews across Portugal, North Africa, Italy, the Ottoman Empire and other parts of Europe. Communities carried books, languages, rituals and commercial connections with them, while forced conversion and suspicion continued to shape Iberian Jewish and converso life.
People of the Book uses the imagined history of the Sarajevo Haggadah to follow a manuscript through Sephardic displacement and preservation. The context is useful for fiction about Jewish exile, manuscript culture, the Inquisition, Venice, Ottoman refuge and the movement of objects across religious frontiers.
