Damascus

Author(s): Christos Tsiolkas

Aust Fiction

 


Winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2020.   The stunningly powerful new novel from the author of The Slap. 'They kill us, they crucify us, they throw us to beasts in the arena, they sew our lips together and watch us starve. They bugger children in front of their mothers and violate men in front of their wives. The temple priests flay us openly in the streets. We are hunted everywhere and we are hunted by everyone ...We are despised, yet we grow. We are tortured and crucified and yet we flourish. We are hated and still we multiply. Why is that? You have to wonder, how is it that we not only survive but we grow stronger?' Christos Tsiolkas' stunning new novel Damascus is a work of soaring ambition and achievement, of immense power and epic scope, taking as its subject nothing less than events surrounding the birth and establishment of the Christian church. Based around the gospels and letters of St Paul, and focusing on characters one and two generations on from the death of Christ, as well as Paul (Saul) himself, Damascus nevertheless explores the themes that have always obsessed Tsiolkas as a writer: class, religion, masculinity, patriarchy, colonisation, exile; the ways in which nations, societies, communities, families and individuals are united and divided - it's all here, the contemporary and urgent questions, perennial concerns made vivid and visceral.  In Damascus, Tsiolkas has written a masterpiece of imagination and transformation: an historical novel of immense power and an unflinching dissection of doubt and faith, tyranny and revolution, and cruelty and sacrifice.      

Damascus by Christos Tsiolkas


 Taking the gospels and letters of St Paul as its weft this incredible novel tells of the beginnings of the Christian church. Set in the years after the death of Christ, Tsiolkas evokes the chaos, passion, squalor and brutality of the time, as well as the competing ideologies that underpin so much of our contemporary intolerances. Told through several voices, apostles, slaves, gaolers,a noblewoman, each chapter reads like an incantation. I was blown away by the sheer force of the writing. Molly

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Product Information

 


 

 

 

 Longlisted ABIA Awards 2020

Longlisted Indie Awards - Fiction 2020

 Winner - Victorian Premier's Award Fiction
 
 
 

 

 
 
 

General Fields

  • : 9781760875091
  • : Allen & Unwin
  • : Allen & Unwin
  • : May 2019
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 432
  • : 823/.914
  • : English
  • : 1st
  • : Paperback
  • : Christos Tsiolkas