Synopses & Reviews
From The New York Times best-selling author of The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Fabers The Fire Gospel is a wickedly funny, acid-tongued, media-savvy picaresque that delves into our sensationalist culture. Theo Griepenkerl, a Canadian linguistics scholar, is sent to Iraq in search of artifacts that have survived the destruction and looting of the war. While visiting a museum in Mosul, he finds nine papyrus scrolls tucked in the belly of a basrelief sculpture: they have been perfectly preserved for more than two thousand years. After smuggling them out of Iraq and translating them from Aramaic, Theo realizes the extent of his career-making find, for he is in possession of the Fifth Gospel, and it offers a shocking and incomparable eyewitness account of Christs crucifixion and last days on Earth. A hugely entertaining, and by turns shocking story, The Fire Gospel is a smart, stylish, and suspenseful novel.
Synopsis
Theo Griepenkerl is a modest academic with an Olympian ego. When he visits a looted museum in Iraq, looking for treasures he can ship back to Canada, he finds nine papyrus scrolls that have lain hidden for two thousand years. Once translated from Aramaic, these prove to be a fifth Gospel, written by an eye-witness of Jesus Christ's last days. But when Theo decides to share this sensational discovery with the world, he fails to imagine the impact the new Gospel will have on Christians, Arabs, homicidal maniacs and Amazon customers. Like Prometheus's gift of fire, it has incendiary consequences.
The Fire Gospel is an enthralling novel about the power of words to resonate across centuries, and inspire and disrupt in equal measure. Wickedly provocative, hilarious and shocking by turns, it is a revelatory piece of storytelling.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Michel Faber has written five previous books, including the international bestseller
The Crimson Petal and the White, and the Whitbread-shortlisted novel,
Under the Skin, both of which have been published all over the world. He has also won several short-story awards, including the Neil Gunn, Ian St James and Macallan.
Some Rain Must Fall, his debut collection, won the Saltire First Book of the Year award in 1999. Born in Holland, brought up in Australia, he now lives in the Scottish Highlands.