The Kingdom

*'This is a brilliant, shocking book ... also witty, painfully self-critical and humane ... it is a work of great literature' Tim Whitmarsh, Guardian
'The Kingdom, already a huge bestseller in France, is thrilling, magnificent and strange' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times*

The sensational international bestseller from one of France's most fêted writers - an epic novel telling the story of Christianity as it has never been told before, and one man's crisis of faith.* Corinth, ancient Greece, two thousand years ago. An itinerant preacher, poor, wracked by illness, tells the story of a prophet who was crucified in Judea, who came back from the dead, and whose return is a sign of something enormous. Like a contagion, the story will spread over the city, the country and, eventually, the world. Emmanuel Carrère's astonishing historical epic tells the story of the mysterious beginnings of Christianity, bringing to life a distant, primeval past of strange sects, apocalyptic beliefs and political turmoil. In doing so Carrère, once himself a fervent believer, questions his own faith, asks why we believe in resurrection, and what it means. The Kingdom* is his masterpiece.

'An utterly brilliant book' Catherine Nixey, The Times