Pilgermann is a 1983 novel by Russell Hoban, set in the Middle Ages and depicting the journey of a Jew across Europe and North Africa on his way to the Holy Land.
Life in Europe is seen through a series of grotesque, Brueghel- and Bosch-like images of horror, violence, degradation, and death.
Halfway across the Mediterranean, Pilgermann's boat is ambushed by pirates who sell him to a Muslim grandee named Bembel Redzuk, in the city of Antioch in ancient Syria.
The book is suffused with Kabbalistic, Sufi, and Christian mystical imagery, including references to the Tarot, the work of artists such as Brueghel and Bosch, the Gnostic idea of the Sophia, and many others.
It was written after Hoban's post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker, which portrayed a future state for the world reminiscent of the Middle Ages.