For two thousand years, the brief ministry of a young Nazarene preacher has remained the largest single determinant of Western civilization's triumphs and disasters. Now, Norman Mailer has written a novel about Jesus's life. Is God speaking to me? Jesus asks. Or am I hearing voices? If the voices are from God, why has He chosen me as His son? And if they are not from God, then who gave me the power to perform these miracles?

It soon becomes evident that we are being told the story of a skilled and most devout carpenter who is living with prodigious questions. The result is an intimately readable account of a man thrust forward by the visions he receives, the sermons he offers, and the miracles he enacts until he comes to the apocalyptic end of his powers.

The Gospel According to the Son vividly recreates the world of Galilee and Jerusalem two thousand years ago. In a time of uneasy stability, the Holy Land is governed by a complacent but fearful establishment who rule over a despairing underclass -- it is a time of great change, open to comparison with our own. Mailer's signal accomplishment is to create for us a man wholly unlike others who is nonetheless filled with passion and doubt, strength and weakness; a protagonist divine and human, a son of God who shares our condition.

In The Gospel According to the Son , one of America's greatest living writers has brought us a remarkable book -- by turns bold, thoughtful, poetic, tragic, passionate, and, to our surprise and pleasure, suspenseful.

From the Hardcover edition.

诺曼•梅勒

☉美国著名作家，国际笔会美国分会主席，美国“全国文学艺术院”院士，“美国文学艺术研究院”院士。

☉两获普利策奖的文坛鬼才和数届诺贝尔文学奖热门候选人。

☉上过前线，当过导演，参加过纽约市长竞选，还结过六次婚，育有九个孩子，同时也是 “硬汉文学”、非虚构写作的践行者与新新闻主义写作的创始人之一。

☉作为一个集小说家、政客、文化名人、随笔作家、记者、文学批评家、诗人、导演、编剧、演员、社会活动家、运动迷于一身的时代偶像，梅勒毕生将写作当成一项英雄般的事业。

☉他是一位与海明威并驾齐驱的重量级作家，苛求自己与同时代的同行竞争，更把自己视为托尔斯泰和陀思妥耶夫斯基式的人物。他在美国文坛活跃了60年，因此被称作“美国最伟大的当代作家”。

1923年生于美国新泽西州；

1943年毕业于哈佛大学；

1944年至1946年在太平洋地区服役；

1948年写出了成名作《裸者与死者》；

1968年，《夜幕下的军队》获普利策奖；

1980年，《刽子手之歌》）再获普利策奖；

2005年获美国国家图书基金会的美国文学杰出贡献奖；

2007年出版最后一部小说《林中城堡》。