The Liars' Gospel

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This is the story of a Jewish man, Yehoshuah, who wandered Roman-occupied Judea giving sermons and healing the sick. Now, a year after his death, four people tell their stories. His mother flashes between grief and rage while trouble brews between her village and the occupying soldiers. Iehuda, who was once Yehoshuah's friend, recalls how he came to lose his faith and find a place among the Romans. Caiaphas, the High Priest at the great Temple in Jerusalem, tries to hold the peace between Rome and Judea. Bar-Avo, a rebel, strives to bring that peace tumbling down.

This thrilling novel makes the oldest story entirely new. Viscerally powerful in its depictions of the realities of the period: massacres and riots, animal sacrifice and human betrayal, it finds echoes of the present in the past. It was a time of political power-play and brutal tyranny and occupation. Young men and women took to the streets to protest. Dictators put them down with iron force. Rumours spread from mouth to mouth. Rebels attacked the greatest Empire the world has ever known. The Empire gathered its forces to make those rebels pay.

And in the midst of all of that, one inconsequential preacher died. And either something miraculous happened, or someone lied.

A glittering style, a compulsive pleasure
Metro

The dark wit that characterised her previous novels, Disobedience and The Lessons, runs through this book as an undercurrent, but The Liars' Gospel shows the hand of a mature novelist, a daring and accomplished work on a broad canvas. She is as much at home describing the sorrow of a mother as the cut and thrust of theological debate, as convincing on the weariness of a man forced into moral compromise as the rush of blood in a teenage boy caught up in his first riot. She paints the sweep of history through the sharp pain of human love and loss, and it is a remarkable achievement.
Stephanie Merritt, The Observer

About Naomi Alderman

Naomi Alderman is an award-winning novelist, TV producer and videogames creator. She is the author of the bestselling The Power (Penguin Books 2017), winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and since adapted for TV by Amazon Prime. Her other books include The Future (2023), The Liars’ Gospel (2013), The Lessons (2010) and Disobedience (2006) and the forthcoming non-fiction book about the information crisis: Don't Burn Anyone At The Stake Today. She is the co-creator of the fitness game and audio adventure Zombies, Run! which has more than 10 million players. Naomi writes and presents Human Intelligence, the history of thinkers from Socrates to Mary Wollstonecraft to Malcolm X on BBC Radio 4. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Details

Imprint: Penguin
Published: 30/08/2012
ISBN: 9780670919925
Length: 272 pages
Price: £6.99

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The Liars' Gospel

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A glittering style, a compulsive pleasure

Exciting, entertaining and enthralling read - this is story telling of the very highest order. It's certainly one of my books of the year.

Remarkable. Alderman is a supremely talented writer

A series of thoughtful, humane sketches that seek to earnestly put the meat of character on the bones of the bible... An evocative, secular exploration of the New Testaments' sprawling horizons

Witty, dark and compelling

Marvellously told and wonderfully done

Such intensity ... a big book about history and violence, you can feel the blood running off the page. It is also a very personal and human book

First piece I've read that puts you completely into the Jewish history. A fascinating new look

Gripping and visceral

About Naomi Alderman

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