The Gospel According To The Son

For two thousand years, the brief ministry of a young Nazarene preacher has remained the largest single determinant of Western civilisation's triumphs, harmonies, discords and disasters. Now Norman Mailer has written a novel about Jesus' life. Is God speaking to me? Jesus asks. Or am I hearing voices? If the voices are from God, why has he chosen me as His Son? And if they are not from God, then who gave me the power to perform these miracles? It soon becomes evident that we are being told the story of a skilled and devout carpenter who is living with prodigious questions. The result, paradoxically, is an intimately readable account of a man thrust forward by the visions he receives, the sermons he offers and the miracles he enacts until he comes to the apocalyptic end of his powers. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON, while adhering closely to the New Testament, also succeeds in vividly recreating the world of Galilee and Jerusalem two thousand years ago. In a time of uneasy stability, the Holy Land is governed by a complacent but fearful establishment who Pule over a despairing underclass - a time open to comparison with our own century. Norman Mailer's signal accomplishment is to create for us a man wholly unlike others who is nonetheless filled with passion and doubt, strength and weakness; a protagonist divine and human, a son of God who shares our condition. In THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON, one of the world's greatest living writers has brought us a remarkable book - by turns bold, thoughtful, poetic, tragic, passionate, and - to our surprise and pleasure - suspenseful.