The Gospel of Judas Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Gospel of Judas Book

In Simon Mawer's remarkably poised and poignant novel, the small moment is as significant as the large, and "the detail dictat[es] to the whole." Biblical scholar Father Leo Newman has spent a lifetime deciphering meaning from evanescent fragments of papyrus; he is much less accustomed to descrying the metamorphosis of a relationship writ large ("a mysterious thing, much too mysterious for a simple naming"). How unlikely, then, that he should fall in love with Madeleine Brewer, the vibrant but unbalanced wife of a bureaucrat. How unlikely, too, that he should be confronted with an ancient scroll whose details are radically incendiary rather than dustily abstruse: an apparent account of Jesus' life from Judas's point of view. But how marvelously likely that Mawer should take these elements and create a haunting narrative of doubt and faith, "the thin wash of immediacy" and memory, passion and the fragile remains of its absence. Madeleine and the Judas scroll thrust themselves, uninvited and unexpected, into Leo's quiet life in Rome, their very presence a counterpoint to his isolation and vulnerability. Asked by Madeleine to compromise a lifetime, asked by his colleagues to verify or deny the scroll's authenticity, Leo is a profoundly Prufrockian figure, "No Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be." Does he dare disturb the universe? Mawer skillfully interleaves three narratives: the story of Leo's German mother's life in Rome during World War II, a woman who was herself forced to choose between principle and passion; the unsettling story of Leo's relationship with Madeleine and the scroll; and a circumspect "present," in which Leo is still "a hermit in a cave, a hermit who was hoarding the few fragments of his faith lest they too be swept away by circumstance." The novel represents a solemn quest, striving back toward half-forgotten origins in an attempt to bring order to a present and future spinning out of control. Its most poignant irony is that Leo is at once creator and destroyer--as he pieces together the story of the scroll, he is simultaneously unraveling his own faith, his own raison d'ĂȘtre: A dun-colored fibrous fragment hung there behind the glass, a fragment of papyrus the color of biscuit, inscribed with the most perfect letters ever man devised, words wrought in the lean and ragged language of the eastern Mediterranean, the workaday language of the streets, the meaning half apprehended, half grasped, half heard through the noise of all that lies between us and them, the shouting, roaring centuries of darkness and enlightenment. How was it possible to communicate to her the pure, organic thrill? The thrill, thanks to Mawer, is ours. --Kelly FlynnRead More

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  • Product Description

    The Gospel of Judas is the story of an American priest brought to Rome to decipher an ancient scroll that appears to be a Gospel written by Judas - with a very different view of Christ's crucifixion from the ones handed down in the Bible. Already beset by a crisis of faith and on the brink of his first sexual affair, Father Leo Newman must tease out the meaning of this document even as he wrestles with its authenticity and what its revelations mean for him. This is a profound book about loss, faith, redemption, and the possibility of a complete re-interpretation of Christianity. It is also a love story and a literary suspense thriller that is impossible to put down.

  • 0316097500
  • 9780316097505
  • Simon Mawer
  • 1 May 2001
  • Back Bay Books
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 330
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