Having completed the two cycles of legend to which she has devoted her career so far, Anne Rice gives us now her most ambitious and courageous book, a novel about the early years of CHRIST THE LORD, based on the Gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship.

The book’s power derives from the passion its author brings to the writing and the way in which she summons up the voice, the presence, the words of Jesus who tells the story.

"Rice departs from her usual subject matter to pen this curious portrait of a seven-year-old Jesus, who departs Egypt with his family to return home to Nazareth. Rice's painstaking historical research is obvious throughout, whether she's showing the differences among first-century Jewish groups (Pharisees, Essenes and Sadducees all play a part), imagining a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem or depicting the regular but violent rebellions by Jews chafing under Roman rule. The book succeeds in capturing Jesus' profound Jewishness, with some of the best scenes reflecting his Torah education and immersion in the oral traditions of the Hebrew Bible. As fiction, though, the book's first half is slow going. Since it is told from Jesus' perspective, the childlike language can be simplistic, though as readers persevere they will discover the riches of the sparse prose Rice adopts. The emotional heart of the story — Jesus' gradual discovery of the miraculous birth his parents have never discussed with him — picks up steam as well, as he begins to understand why he can heal the sick and raise the dead. Rice provides a moving afterword, in which she describes her recent return to the Catholic faith and evaluates, often in an amusingly strident fashion, the state of biblical studies today." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

What the critics are saying about

Anne Rice’s

Christ the Lord

“A riveting, reverent imagining of the hidden years of the child Jesus . . . A triumph of tone—her prose lean, vivid—and character . . . Christ the Lord is a cross between a historical novel and an update of Tolstoy’s The Gospels in Brief, it presents Jesus as nature mystic, healer, prophet and very much a real young boy . . . Essentially it’s a mystery story, of the child grappling to understand his miraculous gifts and numinous birth . . . As he ponders his staggering responsibility, the boy is fully believable—and yet there’s something in his supernatural empathy and blazing intelligence that conveys the wondrousness of a boy like no other . . . With this novel, Anne Rice has indeed found a convincing version of him; this is fiction that transcends story and instead qualifies as an act of faith.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Rice retains our rapt attention with the use of small, visceral details. We can almost taste the food Jesus would have eaten, experience the sights and sounds, the chaos and bustle of a large clan, with which he would have been familiar.”

—Bernadette Murphy, The Los Angeles Times

“Rice is as serious as a Commandment, and has muscled up her story of the junior Jesus by obsessively researchig the most minute detail of family, communal and religious life in first-century Palestine. . . . Rice is just as ambitious, much more orthodox and just getting warming up . . . From Lestat the vampire to Jesus the Lord is a supernatural stretch but Rice makes it. Convincingly.”

—Bill Bell, Daily News

“Well-researched and nicely written and Rice uses restraint in telling her tale. She believably represents Jesus’ gradual understanding of his origins and fate. . . . Reverent and often moving.”

—Natalie Danford, People

“[Rice] writes this book in a simpler, leaner style, giving it the slow but inexorable rhythm of an incantation. The restraint and prayerful beauty of Christ the Lord is apt to surprise her usual readers and attract new ones.”

—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Rice brings the same passion to her colorful account of the young Jesus and his quest to understand his strange powers (turning clay pigeons into live birds, bringing a dead child back to life). . . . In her attempt to breathe life into a historical religious figure, Rice’s superb storytelling skills enable her to succeed where many other writers have failed. . . . Highly recommended.”

—Library Journal

“This is, in fact, an intensely literal, historical, reverent treatment of a year in the life of Jesus, son of God, written in simple, sedate language that steers clear of both clanging anachronisms and those King Jamesian ye’s and unto’s and begats.”

—Lev Grossman, Time

“In Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Anne Rice scores a direct hit: By embracing the miraculous, she manages to give us a Jesus who is divinely human.”

—Frank Wilson, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Having completed the two cycles of legend to which she has devoted her career so far, Anne Rice

gives us now her most thoughtful and powerful book, a novel about the childhood of Christ the Lord based on the gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship.

The book's power derives from the passion its author brings to the writing, and the way in which she summons up the voice, the presence, the words of the young Jesus who tells the story.Having completed the two cycles of legend to which she has devoted her career so far, Anne Rice gives us now her most thoughtful and powerful book, a novel about the childhood of Christ the Lord based on the gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship.

Anne Rice is the author of twenty-six books. She lives in La Jolla, California.

www.annerice.com