The Gospel Of Judas - Hardcover

Mawer, Simon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316855359 ISBN 13: 9780316855358

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2000

Synopsis

Amongst the ancient papyri of the Dead Sea, a remarkable scroll is discovered. Written in the first century AD, it purports to be the true account of the life of Jesus, as told by Youdas the sicarios - Judas Iscariot. If authentic, it will be one of the most incendiary documents in the history of humankind. The task of proving - or disproving - its validity falls to Father Leo Newman, one of the world's leading experts in Koine, the demotic Greek of the Roman Empire, and a man the newspapers like to call a 'renegade priest'. But as Leo absorbs himself in Judas' testimony, the stories of his own life haunt him. The story of his forbidden yet irresistible love for a married woman. The story of his mother's passionate and tragic affair amidst the war-time ruins of Rome. They are stories of love and betrayal that may threaten his faith just as deeply as the Gospel of Judas...
With a dramatic narrative that spans from the Europe of the Second World War to Jerusalem two thousand years after Jesus' birth, THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS is a compelling and erudite thriller.

About this title

Review:

This carefully wrought and ambitious novel relates the life-history of Father Leo Newman, a priest who is called in to translate and to help authenticate a first-century papyrus scroll that appears to predate the gospels and was written and signed by one Judas Iscariot. The stakes in such an intellectual exercise are high and are exacerbated by the complications of Father Newman's personal life: an affair with the wife of a British diplomat and uncertainty about his family origins. Is he the son of a Nazi officer's wife and her Italian-Jewish lover, whom his mother turns in? Mawer writes with sympathy and wit and is compelling across the entire range of his subject matter: shaken faith, adultery, betrayal, religious intrigue, scholarly controversy. The opening of the novel sets the tone with some flair:

A curious structure, the confessional. A cross between a wardrobe and a prie-dieu, a varnished wooden construction that is probably the only piece of furniture never to have awoken the interest of collectors. You'll not go into a precious modern house, somewhere in Islington say, and find a confessional in the hall and a careless confession by the proud owner that it was "Something we picked up at an auction. We thought it would go so well just there ..."

Skilful writing on many levels makes The Gospel of Judas an intelligent and moving meditation on one man's search for the elusive truth of his life and faith and, never mired in its own profundity, the novel simultaneously reads like a thriller. Neville Hoad END

Review:

It is elegant and intelligently stylistic deliberately written with the weight of Modernist tradition behind it. (GLASGOW HERALD)

A gripping read with a suitably dramatic climax. (DAILY EXPRESS)

Simon Mawer tells a gripping, utterly compelling story. He weaves together the threads of his complex plot with a deftness that keeps the reader mesmerised to the very end of the book. (THE TIMES)

This is a throughly enjoyable and extremely well-written novel. (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0316855359
• ISBN 13: 9780316855358
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352