The Kingdom
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A sweeping fictional account of the early Christians, whose unlikely beliefs conquered the world
Gripped by the tale of a Messiah whose blood we drink and body we eat, the genre-defying author Emmanuel Carrère revisits the story of the early Church in his latest work. With an idiosyncratic and at times iconoclastic take on the charms and foibles of the Church fathers, Carrère ferries readers through his “doors” into the biblical narrative. Once inside, he follows the ragtag group of early Christians through the tumultuous days of the faith’s founding.
Shouldering biblical scholarship like a camcorder, Carrère re-creates the climate of the New Testament with the acumen of a seasoned storyteller, intertwining his own account of reckoning with the central tenets of the faith with the lives of the first Christians. Carrère puts himself in the shoes of Saint Paul and above all Saint Luke, charting Luke’s encounter with the marginal Jewish sect that eventually became Christianity, and retracing his investigation of its founder, an obscure religious freak who died under notorious circumstances.
Boldly blending scholarship with speculation, memoir with journalistic muckraking, Carrère sets out on a headlong chase through the latter part of the Bible, drawing out protagonists who believed they were caught up in the most important events of their time. An expansive and clever meditation on belief, The Kingdom chronicles the advent of a religion, and the ongoing quest to find a place within it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest from Carr re (Limonov) is a tale of modern and ancient Christianity, filtered through a text that's equal parts memoir, academic essay, and fictional exploration. Starting first with the author's brief, intense relationship with religion in the early 1990s, the book follows Carr re's path as he eventually finds fault with his faith. From here, he turns back the clock to parse out the lives of early Christian evangelists, particularly Paul and Luke, starting in 50 CE. Combining scholarship, biblical reference, and imagination, Carr re brings the exploits of these men, working to spread the story of Jesus to the masses while being persecuted and challenged by detractors, to life. The author approaches every moment with the mind of a skeptical storyteller, plugging in personal theories about the identities of the authors behind biblical letters and gospels and questioning the validity of the many miracles Jesus is said to have performed. Jumping back and forth through time at one point, talk of the Virgin Mary leads to a tangent on Internet porn results in a frequently fascinating book written by a curious, sharp mind.