Research Catalog

Knowledge of angels

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Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	PR6066.A84 K58 1994	Off-site

Description

xii, 268 pages; 22 cm

Summary

This "disturbing and beautiful novel of ideas" (Ursula K. Le Guin) is enacted by a wide variety of characters on a Mediterranean island before the Reformation: a saintly monk whose faith is sorely tested; a wild, flesh-eating child who is captured by mountain shepherds and taken to the cardinal prince of the island; a castaway who swims ashore to a very strange welcome.
Peopled by peasants, servants, shepherds, priests, nuns young and old, Knowledge of Angels sets off a wonderful fireworks of attitudes toward God and poses a hundred unrelenting questions.
Is a tolerant engineering wizard who can speak to the priests of the Church in Latin but who will not confess to a belief in God truly a heretic? Must he undergo punishment, or will he undermine the faith of those who are testing his? Will the wolf-girl, who has never heard the name of God spoken, turn into a full-fledged human being, or will she always be at heart the same thing that she was when found?
The story unfolds in unexpected and thrilling ways. As Susan Cooper, the Newberry Medal winner, has written, "Its characters are haunting and its story will not let you pause to take breath." Laid in a medieval time of unquestioning faith, and conveyed in simple but evocative prose, this book explores the conflicts between tolerance and moral certainty, between loving kindness and murderous cruelty. It has all too much relevance to our contemporary world.

Subjects

Note

ISBN

0395686660

LCCN

93029607

OCLC

ocm28632169

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries