This is actually the story of a location that never was: the kingdom of Prester John, the utopia referred to by an anonymous, twelfth-century document which captured the imagination from the medieval world and drove hundreds of lost souls to seek out its secrets, inspiring explorers, missionaries, and kings for centuries. But what if it were all true? What if there was such a location, and a poor, broken priest once stumbled past its edges, discovering, not a Christian heaven, but a nation where everything about The Habitation from the Blessed is possible, immortality is quickly had, and the Western world is certainly only a dim and distant dream? Brother Hiob of Luzerne, on missionary function in the Himalayan wilderness over the eve from the eighteenth hundred years, discovers a village guarding a miraculous tree whose branches sprout books rather than fruit. These strange books chronicle the annals of the kingdom of Prester John, and Hiob turns into enthusiastic about the tales they inform. The Habitation of the Blessed recounts the fragmented narratives found within these living volumes, revealing the life of a priest called John, and his rise to power with this nation of difficult richness. John’s story weaves alongside the confessions of his wife Hagia, a blemmye – a headless creature who transported her face on her chest – aswell as the sensitive, jeweled nursery tales of Imtithal, nanny towards the royal family.