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.

諾曼•梅勒

☉美國著名作傢，國際筆會美國分會主席，美國“全國文學藝術院”院士，“美國文學藝術研究院”院士。

☉兩獲普利策奬的文壇鬼纔和數屆諾貝爾文學奬熱門候選人。

☉上過前綫，當過導演，參加過紐約市長競選，還結過六次婚，育有九個孩子，同時也是 “硬漢文學”、非虛構寫作的踐行者與新新聞主義寫作的創始人之一。

☉作為一個集小說傢、政客、文化名人、隨筆作傢、記者、文學批評傢、詩人、導演、編劇、演員、社會活動傢、運動迷於一身的時代偶像，梅勒畢生將寫作當成一項英雄般的事業。

☉他是一位與海明威並駕齊驅的重量級作傢，苛求自己與同時代的同行競爭，更把自己視為托爾斯泰和陀思妥耶夫斯基式的人物。他在美國文壇活躍瞭60年，因此被稱作“美國最偉大的當代作傢”。

1923年生於美國新澤西州；

1943年畢業於哈佛大學；

1944年至1946年在太平洋地區服役；

1948年寫齣瞭成名作《裸者與死者》；

1968年，《夜幕下的軍隊》獲普利策奬；

1980年，《劊子手之歌》）再獲普利策奬；

2005年獲美國國傢圖書基金會的美國文學傑齣貢獻奬；

2007年齣版最後一部小說《林中城堡》。