The Outcasts of Time is a time travel historical novel by historian Ian Mortimer.
As The Black Death ravages Southwesten England in 1348, two brothers, John and William, stumble upon a family by the side of the road; the parents are dead of The Plague, but their three-month-old infant survives. Against William's wishes, John rescues the child (who he names Lazarus) — an act that eventually results in a voice telling John he has 6 days to live. Does he choose to return home to his family for those days, or will he accept the offer the voice makes him — to live the last 6 days of his life in the future, each one 99 years after the previous, and attempt to save his soul in the process?
Ian Mortimer (author of, famously, The Time Travellers Guide to the Middle Ages) gets to hop-skip through British history (1447, 1546, 1645, 1744, 1843 and 1942) and consider the changing nature of morality, mortality and goodness.
This novel contains examples of:
- Anyone Can Die: And probably will, given that this is The Middle Ages.
- Outliving One's Offspring: John and William find the home of a woman they know. Her children are in bed, dead of The Black Death. She has hanged herself in despair.
- Shown Their Work: Ian Mortimer is a medieval historian who has written extensively on The High Middle Ages and The Late Middle Ages (the period The Black Death belongs to). In his author's notes, he shared that there was an earlier draft of this novel that was written in the local dialect of Middle English that his characters would have been speaking.
- The X of Y: The title.
