Some writers immerse themselves particularly deeply in the matter they want to write about – such as “Medicus” author Noah Gordon.
The bestselling author died on Tuesday shortly after his 95th birthday, as his family announced. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1926, Gordon was supposed to study medicine and become a doctor. That cost him little to overcome, his keen interest in the natural sciences lasted to the end. What was greater, however, was his love for literature and journalism. After studying journalism, Gordon worked as an assistant editor for several New York publishers. Above all, however, he wrote for the science journalist Boston Herald. His duties included reports on the major hospitals and research laboratories in Boston. In order to be able to write his novels set in the hospital environment as authentically as possible, he even trained as a surgical technician. Later I also trained as an emergency assistant.
His first novel, “The Rabbi”, made it onto the bestseller lists
In the meantime he had moved to the country with his family and worked for the surgical emergency service. This brought him into contact with emergencies on the surrounding farms – a valuable source for his historical novels.
Writing novels was the journalist Gordon’s dream – but he struggled with it. He once said that he suffers from attention deficit disorder (ADD) star-Interview. It is a tremendous effort for him to concentrate on one topic over a long period of time. Gordon worked on a novel for an average of four years, and research alone took him a year. And yet perseverance was obviously one of his strengths: His first novel, “The Rabbi”, made it into the bestseller lists. The next three flopped – Gordon carried on anyway.
“Der Rabbi” was published in 1967 in Germany. In it he addresses love, but also the conflicts that a rabbi’s marriage to a Christian is exposed to. Gordon himself was a Jew – and his religion was one of the red threads that run through his novels.
This also applies to the “Medicus” trilogy with which he became known in Germany. In 1987 the first volume “Der Medicus” appeared in German translation. Rob Cole, the progenitor of a medical dynasty and gifted with special empathy, traveled to Persia in the 11th century to learn the secrets of the art of healing. The mixture of tension, historical background and factual knowledge reached an audience of millions in Germany. “Probably no other work has shaped the image of the Germans of the high Middle Ages as lastingly as this one,” wrote about The world. The film was released in 2013, and it too became a global success. Initially, however, Gordon quarreled with the heavily shortened and changed script version. The “Medicus” is now also available as a musical.
The two follow-up novels “Der Schamane” (1992) and “Die Erben des Medicus” (1995) fall away from the first volume, but were still bought in large numbers in Germany.
Most recently Gordon lived in a senior citizens’ residence, where he took care of the library donated by him and his wife. It is said that he celebrated his last birthday on November 11th with a lot of joy on his homepage: “grateful for the long and eventful life he has led”.