Knowledge Of Angels: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Feb 2011 · Random House
5.0star
3 reviews
Ebook
288
Pages
About this ebook
THE EXQUISITE PHILOSOPHOCAL FABLE, SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
'This remarkable novel resembles an illuminated manuscript mapped with angels and mountains and signposts, an allegory for today and yesterday too. A beautiful, unsettling moral fiction about virtue and intolerance' Observer
At opposite ends of Grandinsula, a remote pre-reformation Christian island, shepherds find a creature with strange footprints stealing their lambs, and fishermen find a swimmer near exhaustion struggling towards the shore.
The child cannot stand, eat or speak like a human being; the swimmer says he is a prince in the unheard of land of Aclar, and declares himself to be an atheist.
Severo, Cardinal-Prince of the island, is confronted by a double conundrum. Could an atheist be received in good faith? Not if the knowledge of God is inborn and he has reneged it. If he is a renegade from the truth, he must be burned as a heretic; but Severo would dearly like to save him.
And what of the feral child, abandoned by her mother and suckled by wolves, who knows nothing of the precarious relationship between Church and State? Does she, in fact, have a soul to save?
Her innocence will become the subject of a dangerous experiment, a philosophical game of chess that soon turns into a matter of life and death...
'A compelling medieval fable, written from the heart and melded to a driving narrative which never once loses its tremendous pace' Guardian
'Remarkable...Utterly absorbing...richly detailed and finely imagined' Sunday Telegraph
(Shortlisted Booker Prize 1994)
'This remarkable novel resembles an illuminated manuscript mapped with angels and mountains and signposts, an allegory for today and yesterday too. A beautiful, unsettling moral fiction about virtue and intolerance' Observer
At opposite ends of Grandinsula, a remote pre-reformation Christian island, shepherds find a creature with strange footprints stealing their lambs, and fishermen find a swimmer near exhaustion struggling towards the shore.
The child cannot stand, eat or speak like a human being; the swimmer says he is a prince in the unheard of land of Aclar, and declares himself to be an atheist.
Severo, Cardinal-Prince of the island, is confronted by a double conundrum. Could an atheist be received in good faith? Not if the knowledge of God is inborn and he has reneged it. If he is a renegade from the truth, he must be burned as a heretic; but Severo would dearly like to save him.
And what of the feral child, abandoned by her mother and suckled by wolves, who knows nothing of the precarious relationship between Church and State? Does she, in fact, have a soul to save?
Her innocence will become the subject of a dangerous experiment, a philosophical game of chess that soon turns into a matter of life and death...
'A compelling medieval fable, written from the heart and melded to a driving narrative which never once loses its tremendous pace' Guardian
'Remarkable...Utterly absorbing...richly detailed and finely imagined' Sunday Telegraph
(Shortlisted Booker Prize 1994)
Ratings and reviews
5.0
3 reviews
Onkar Singh Korotana
- Flag inappropriate
November 10, 2014
A must read just brilliant
About the author
Jill Paton Walsh was educated at St Michael's Convent, North Finchley, and at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is the author of several highly praised adult novels: Lapsing, A School For Lovers, Knowledge of Angels, which was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize, Goldengrove Unleaving, The Serpentine Cave and A Desert in Bohemia. She has also won many awards for her children's literature, including the Whitbread Prize, the Universe Prize and the Smarties Award. She has three children and lives in Cambridge.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.