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    The Liars' Gospel: A Novel
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    The Liars' Gospel: A Novel
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    The Liars' Gospel: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Liars' Gospel: A Novel

    Written by Naomi Alderman

    Narrated by Matthew Wolf, Neil Dickson and Moira Quirk

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    An award-winning writer re-imagines the life of Jesus, from the points of view of four people closest to him before his death.

    This is the story of 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 grieves, his friend Iehuda loses his faith, the High Priest of the Temple tries to keep the peace, and a rebel named Bar-Avo strives to bring that peace tumbling down.

    It was a time of political power-play and brutal tyranny. Men and women took to the streets to protest. Dictators put them down with iron force. In the midst of it all, one inconsequential preacher died. And either something miraculous happened, or someone lied.

    Viscerally powerful in its depictions of the period - massacres and riots, animal sacrifice and human betrayal - The Liars' Gospel makes the oldest story entirely new.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateMar 12, 2013
    ISBN9781619698239
    Unavailable
    The Liars' Gospel: A Novel
    Author

    Naomi Alderman

    Naomi Alderman is the bestselling author of The Power, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and was recommended as a book of the year by both Barack Obama and Bill Gates. As a novelist, Alderman has been mentored by Margaret Atwood via the Rolex Arts Initiative, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and her work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. As a video games designer, she was lead writer on the groundbreaking alternate reality game Perplex City, and is cocreator of the award-winning smartphone exercise adventure game Zombies, Run!, which has more than 10 million players. She is professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University. She lives in London.

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    Reviews for The Liars' Gospel

    3.5/5

    45 ratings6 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Just couldn't get into this at all. Bah. Author I used to love, too.
    • 5/5
      Gospels retold, focusing on Mary, Judas, Caiaphas, Barabbas. Less heroic than Ben-Hur but very moving in parts. I'm sure there's much that may offend here, but to me. In particular I've often wondered what the first few years after The Crucifixion (not crucifiction) may have been like in Jerusalem and these stories made me more aware of how filled with conflict the years of Roman occupation were.
    • 3/5
      I would like to thank Little, Brown, and Company as well as NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. I was intrigued by the description of this story and also by the cover print. Being a Christian, I enjoy reading things that expand my knowledge about the time of Jesus. I found this to be an interesting and thought provoking book. That said, I do not share the views of the author that human emotions made those who witnessed or wrote the gospels vulnerable to lie or expand the truth. I do appreciate it as a work of fiction and found the history of the time described by the author to be fascinating and well researched.The first of the narrators is Miryam, the mother of Jesus, who comes to the aid of a young fugitive man, Gidon. This is shortly after the crucifixion of her son. She is filled with emotions of loss, rejection, and vanished hope. This young man fills a void in her life as he tries to draw stories about the young Jesus from her memory. Gidon, clearly becomes something of a substitute for her son Jesus, and he is able to soften her feelings towards Jesus as he tells her of the reports of his possible resurrection.The second narrator is Iehuda (Judas). Rather than following the depiction of his suicide from the gospels, the author has Judas alive and hiding, continuing to suffer conflict about his relationship with God. He retells his story beginning with his initial attraction to Jesus at his calling as one who is sent from God and brings a special connection with him. As days go by, Judas becomes more and more disillusioned with Jesus and begins to see him as just another man who is attracted to power and attention. Eventually he does betray him, but his part in that also does not follow the Bible. The author seems to want us to feel sorry for Judas and see him as someone who is a victim and is looking for a father figure in both man and God.The last two narrators are Caiaphas and Bar-Avo (Barrabas). I found them to be interesting choices, but their narratives focus more on the Roman oppression of the Jews and on each of their contrasting reactions, either negotiation or rebellion. I really enjoyed the first half of the book, regardless of the discrepancies with the Biblical story. I found the author to have shown me a glimpse into the life and mind of Mary that was very plausible and interesting to consider. She really does a good job of making me feel Mary's emotions, and I found her protection of young Gidon to be lovely. It was a viewpoint that I mostly appreciated seeing. I also liked reading the fictional perspective of Judas. We get so few details of any of the characters of the gospels in the Bible, and I really liked imagining some of the background and feelings that they may have experienced.The second half started to seem a little tedious. There were many graphic and occasionally vulgar scenes that I could have done without. The focus shifted more to the conflict between the Jews and the Romans and made these narratives a little disconnected at times.I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in an expanded view of the historic events at the time of Jesus. It has plenty of action and will keep your interest. It is not a book for those who will be offended by the fact that it does not follow the literal Biblical account, and for those readers I would recommend that they give this book a pass.
    • 5/5
      The author Naomi Alderman thanks her teachers in the beginning of Liars Gospel for giving her the gift of double viision in learning both Latin and Hebrew.The novel takkes place in the weeks before Yeshouaha arriving in Jerusalem for the Passover and his betrayal by Iscariot. And eventual cruxifiction. This was and is a great read I learned a lot of history I has not known And the old adage there are two sides to every story os absolutely true. I received this book from Little Brown courtesy of NetGalley.
    • 5/5
      I thought I was going to like this - that's why you checked it out of the library Paul you dumbdumb - but I REALLY liked it! A piece of historical fiction set in the time of Roman occupied Judea, early in the first century CE. Before the first of four parts begin there is an introduction that perfectly sets the tone for much of what lies ahead: The ritual sacrifice of a lamb in the Jerusalem temple (that's THE Temple of course, Herod the Great's rebuilt version of King Solomon's earlier destroyed Temple) is accounted for in considerable detail. A twice daily performed ceremony of utmost importance in the Judean (or 'Jewish') religion, the description is at once something that made this reader feel simultaneously queasy and awe-inspired. The slaughter is given the context of the daily ceremonial life of the Temple, and the various sacrificial offerings large and small made by the faithful visiting pilgrims rich and poor alike. Then the Romans arrive...General Pompey's forces occupy Jerusalem and eventually take control of the Temple. Under his command the conquering army is obviously tough, but actually is reasonably considered and fair. His orders are to not desecrate the temple. The Roman Empire permits the occupied Judeans to carry on with the worship of their God Yahweh.With this setup complete the story begins. It is broken into four parts - each telling a story from the point of view of (in order) - Miryam (Mary), a mother in Nazareth whose eldest son Yehoshua (Jesus) was crucified in Jerusalem a year earlier; Yehuda Ish-Karyot {man of Kariot} (Judas Iscariot), a former disciple of the same Yehoshua, who was thought to be dead, but is actually living as a reinvented and Romanised gentleman in the regional port town Caesaria; Caiaphas, the Cohen HaGadol or High Priest of the Temple; and finally Bar-Avo (Barabbas), an anti-Roman rebel leader.Alderman does a superb job at convincingly portraying 1st century life in Roman Israel as it really might have been. The sights, sounds and smells of various markets, villages, bath-houses, and homes of the rich and poor, Roman and Jew, really come across. The food and drink is lavishly accounted for - a good selection of olives, fresh figs, white cheeses and a nice glass of wine will go well with this book! {SPOILERS AHEAD}Gideon, a youth escaped from an anti-Roman riot in Jaffa, and one who it turns out both knew and followed the crucified teacher Yehoshua, turns up frost-bitten and nearly dead one winter up in the high hills of Galilee that surround Nazareth. Once nursed back to health he becomes a goat herd and domestic help in Miryam's household. We learn that her husband Yosef is estranged. The Romans are hot on the trail and come looking for the escaped one from Jaffa, while Miryam risks the whole village's safety by uncharacteristically lying about how long Gideon's been staying with them. At first Miryam is resentful of the fact that this boy seems to have known her son in a way that she could not in the last year or two of his life, (since when Yehoshua had stopped coming home) and doesn't really want a daily reminder that he went off the rails so to speak and was killed in punishment by the Romans. But at the same time she is glad to have someone in the home who is interested in her recollections of her departed son as a boy. Gideon's stated love for her son's teachings somehow seem to keep his memory alive for her.Yehuda Ish-Kariot is portrayed as a very complex and sensitive man, and one who thinks quite deeply. Living as an 'enslaved guest' in the home of a wealthy Roman citizen and merchant, Yehuda's party-piece, at his host's behest, is to "tell that funny story of the one in Jerusalem who thought he was the King". As with Conrad's Marlowe, Alderman has her character tell the story as a sequence of past events. Yehuda tells how much he loved his dearly departed wife, and that he almost didn't recover from her sudden death. Once he has encountered a small group of men banded together on the road in the company of their Nazarene teacher, he throws his lot in with them and becomes an especially passionate believer in his ministry. As the group grew and attracted increasing attention, Yehuda finds himself somewhat at odds with Yehoshua's seemingly carefree attitude to those proclaiming him the 'Annointed One', the Messiah. The episode of Lazarus' sister Mary annointing Jesus' feet with a pint of very expensive spikenard oil (John 12:1–10), just before the Passover in Bethany, is reworked by Alderman with considerable verve. (The village where she has it happen is called Beit-Ani {in Hebrew the 'house' or 'place of the poor'} and it is Yehoshua's head which is annointed. Alderman seems to loosely base her retold parables on a sort of amalgam of the different canonic gospels familiar to many.) Yehuda doesn't understand why such an expensive ointment (worth a labourer's annual wage) wasn't sold to feed the poor, and doesn't understand his teacher's vague response. He becomes increasingly disillusioned...Caiaphas' story is interesting in that it is told in almost complete isolation from the story of Jesus. We learn of the daily comings and goings of a privileged and powerful family. The High Priest is in effect the 'spiritual leader' of the local Jewish population, and has a pseudo-political role. As such, it is fascinating to see the portrayal of the relationship between the occupied and the occupier. (I couldn't help but draw my own clumsy analogy with the ongoing situation in modern Israel regarding the 'autonomous' Palestine Authority... but that's another conversation for another day.) His concerns are primarily with the purity of his own soul (and by extension the soul of the nation as a whole) - which extends to the purity of his wife's soul - as every year on the holy Day of Atonement - Yom Kippur - he must proffer himself before God in the Temple's inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies. This is where God lives and only the High Priest must ever step foot there, and only ever on that day. A Rope will be tied to his ankle so that he may be pulled out should the Lord smite him there and then as has happened before. Understandably he is preoccupied with his own suspicions of his wife's infidelity as it can truly be a matter of life and death.The events surrounding the arrest and crucifixion of a strange and apparently rabble-rousing teacher from Galilee are told from Caiaphas' perspective almost as an aside in his ongoing struggle with the Roman Prefect Pilate over the supply of Temple monies for civic projects - forbidden by Jewish law. There is the disturbing episode of a mob disrupting the Temple routine one year in the days before Passover, upsetting the tables and assaulting the money-changers... Nevertheless, the simmering atmosphere of pending rebellion, disorder and faithlessness is brewing all the time.Which leads the story of The Liars' Gospel nicely to Bar-Avo's tale. His name (not his given name) means "His Father's Son" in Hebrew, and we learn why that is so, and why his actual name is never used. Alderman tells Barabbas' story almost as though he were Mario Puzo's young Vito Corleone on his way up through the ranks of hoodlums and made men who run the black markets and smuggle the weapons around Jerusalem under the eyes of the Roman garrison. There are several episodes of {graphically} violent revolt which lead to Bar-Avo's arrest and his subsequent encounter with Yehoshua/Jesus we're familiar with. His place on the Roman cross is taken by the 'King of the Jews' who doesn't appear to have as many friends in town as the king of the wise guys... A long career in increasingly political anti-Imperialist rebellion unfolds for Bar-Avo, yet somehow he prospers, seeming to live a charmed life. He finds himself on occasion thinking back to his moments in the same cell beneath the Prefect's house when he talked with the Nazarene about God and faith, and is thankful that it was not he who died on the cross that Passover.I'd be giving this the full five stars if it wasn't for the slightly heavy-handed way that the epilogue explains why it is that the gospel may well be the liars' gospel of the title. I thought it would've been wiser to leave the reader to decide for themselves. On the whole though, this was a very believable and enjoyable imagined story of some of the major figures in Jesus' days, and how we should always be wary of history's perspectives. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      I read The Liars’ Gospel by Naomi Alderman for a discussion on Jen @ Devourer of Books’s blog.This book, told from 4 different points of view of those who were in his life, tells the story of a man named Yehoshuah. Yehoshuah preached the word of G-d, healed the sick, and ended up gaining a large following.Was Yehoshuah the Messiah? Or was his story inflated by those who knew him?Naomi Alderman fictionalized the story of Yehoshuah, better known as Jesus, as told by his mother, a former confidant, and two others who knew him.The Liars’ Gospel by Naomi Alderman gave a fictionalized version of the story of Yehoshuah (Jesus), who is portrayed more as a man who has inflated stories told about him than as the potential Messiah.Being raised Jewish, the story of Jesus is not something I am very familiar with. I know the “outline” of the story but not many of the details.I really enjoyed this novel, a lot more than I expected! Naomi Alderman made sure not to alienate her readers by forcing beliefs onto them, but instead told a story that lets the reader decide what to believe.Who should read this book?Readers who have an open mind about a known religious story told in a different way. And fellow Jews, don’t be scared off by this story, like I was at first. It was a great read!What do you think of a fictionalized telling of a known religious story?Thanks for reading,Rebecca @ Love at First Book