The Liars' Gospel Book

'He was a traitor a rabble-leader a rebel a liar and a pretender to the throne. We have tried to forget him here'. For fans of "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ" by Phillip Pulman Naomi Alderman's "The Liars' Gospel" 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. "The Liars' Gospel" 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. "Remarkable. Alderman is a supremely talented writer". (Joanne Harris). "A glittering style a compulsive pleasure". ("Metro"). "Witty dark and compelling". (Charlotte Mendelson). Naomi Alderman grew up in the Orthodox Jewish community in northwest London. Her first novel "Disobedience" was published in 10 languages and won the Orange Award for New Writers and the "Sunday Times" Young Writer of the Year prize. Like her second novel "The Lessons" it was broadcast as Radio 4's "Book at Bedtime". She is a frequent radio broadcaster and a regular contributor to the "Guardian" and "Prospect". She lives in London.Read More