John
A Novel
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
At a time when Americans remain skeptical about religion but still thirst for spiritual fulfillment, Niall Williams's extraordinary and masterful new novel reveals a universally appealing message of hope and love.
In the years following the death of Jesus Christ, John the Apostle, now a frail, blind old man, lives in forced exile on the desolate island of Patmos with a small group of his disciples. Together, the group has endured their banishment, but after years awaiting Christ's return, fissures form within their faith, and, inevitably, one of John's followers disavows Christ's divinity and breaks away from the community, threatening to change the course of Christianity. When the Roman emperor lifts the banishment of Christians, John and his followers are permitted to return to Ephesus, a chaotic world of competing religious sects where Christianity is in danger of vanishing. It is against this turbulent background-and inspired by Jesus's radical message of love and forgiveness-that John comes to dictate his Gospel.
Immensely impressive-and based on actual historical events-John is at once an ambitious and provocative reimagining of the last surviving apostle and a powerful look at faith and how it lives and dies in the hearts of men.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With plenty of imagination and occasionally grandiloquent prose, Williams (Four Letters of Love) pens the last days of the Apostle John, the beloved disciple of Jesus who, tradition says, wrote the wild, apocalyptic book of Revelation as well as the Gospel and Epistles of John. The story begins as John, blind and nearly 100 years old, lives banished on the Island of Patmos where he once received his portentous vision. Surrounded by doubting disciples of his own who pepper him with questions about Christ's return and speak heresy, John remembers his time with Jesus. Williams's present tense narration lends urgency as he interweaves dark and sometimes grotesquely violent threads throughout his story. He beautifully portrays the Christ-followers' loneliness as they yearn for the return of their Messiah and despair at the reception of the Christian message. Some of Williams's prose is fresh and elegant ("a bright wind hammers silver out of the sea"); at other times it is confusing ("the trader unsnaps dogs of curses"). The second half of the book loses momentum, but offers interesting conjectures about the explosion of dissenting beliefs after Jesus' death and how people of the time might have responded. This novel will appeal to readers who like imaginative and gritty sagas of the lives of key Christians in the early church as well as those who value lyricism.
