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The Gospel of Judas: A Novel Paperback – May 8, 2002

by Simon Mawer (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 204 ratings
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A priest experiencing a crisis of faith and the married woman to whom he is attracted. A scroll newly discovered near Jerusalem that, if authentic, could open Christianity to a complete reinterpretation. A tragic love affair unfolding in Fascist-dominated Rome during World War II.

These are the elements of a magnificent literary entertainment -- a novel that resonates with tales of love and betrayal as it deals profoundly with questions of faith and what it means to believe. It is at once a love story, a thriller, and a rich novel of ideas.
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  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Back Bay Books
  4. Publication date
    May 8, 2002
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.93 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0316973742
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0316973748
  8. See all details
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"All the Little Raindrops: A Novel" by Mia Sheridan for $10.39
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Simon Mawer was born in England, educated at Oxford, and now lives in Italy. He is the author of four other widely praised and prize-winning novels, including Mendel's Dwarf, which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Back Bay Books (May 8, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316973742
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316973748
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.93 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 204 ratings

About the author

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Simon Mawer

Simon Mawer

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Educated at Millfield School in Somerset and at Brasenose College, Oxford, I took a degree in biology and worked as a biology teacher for many years. My first novel, Chimera, was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1989, winning the McKitterick Prize for first novels. Mendel's Dwarf (1997), reached the last ten of the Booker Prize and was a New York Times "Book to Remember" for 1998. The Gospel of Judas, The Fall (winner of the 2003 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature) and Swimming to Ithaca followed. In 2009 The Glass Room, my tenth book and eighth novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. My 2012 book The Girl Who Fell From The Sky and its sequel Tightrope (2015) both feature the female Special Operations Executive agent Marian Sutro. Tightrope won the 2016 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. In 2018, my eleventh novel, Prague Spring, signalled a return to a Czech setting following both Mendel's Dwarf and The Glass Room; in 2022 my latest novel ANCESTRY, an exploration of fiction and personal history, will be published in both the UK and the US.

I am married, with two children and four grandchildren. My wife and I have lived in Italy for over forty years but now split our time between our home near Rome and a house in England.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
204 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Annie
5.0 out of 5 stars Another winner from a brilliant writer!
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2014
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Simon Mawer is brilliant and definitely up there among my favourite writers.
The Gospel of Judas is the fourth book I have read by this writer and he never disappoints.
The story line centres around Leo,a catholic priest who has an affair with a married woman and the dire consequences of that affair. He plays a leading role in translating an ancient scroll which is believed to be written by Judas and there are consequences to that. As with other stories by Mawer we are taken back in time (World war 2) to be introduced to Leo's mother which provides another insight into Leo. The story is complex in many ways which provide the reader with much opportunity for thought.
Leo was perhaps difficult to place, his character not very well defined, I felt, but small criticism for a wonderful book.
I love Simon Mawer's use of language which he obviously loves to play with, and I suspect he has a deep respect and liking for women! (Even though some of them are such manipulative wenches!)
I recommend highly The Gospel of Judas to anyone who enjoys intelligent but easy to read literature.
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Sarah L. Lunn
4.0 out of 5 stars to understand him
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2013
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This book lets us look at the character of Judas in his own time and feelings of those around him.
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Kerry Walters
3.0 out of 5 stars Too much or too little: take your pick
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2002
Simon Mawr is ambitious. In his *Gospel of Judas*, he wants nothing less than to paint a portrait of post-Christian doubt. The main character, Father Leo Newman, is an everyperson who represents those of us in the earlier 21 century who can no longer believe in the old religion and are forced to create new identities for themselves (the name "Newman" isn't accidental). As such, the novel is a kind of spiritual fin de siecle.
Although this theme isn't exactly a new one, the spin that Mawr puts on it is quite wonderful: what happens to a man--to a culture--already on the religious edge when a new "gospel" is discovered that claims to have been written by Judas Iscariot and gives eyewitness testimony AGAINST the Resurrection?
The good news, then, is the exciting concept that inspires the novel. The bad news, I fear, is that Mawr couldn't quite pull it off. The novel reads as if there are two books crammed into one: Newman's unhappy love affair with Madeleine Brewer, and Newman's involvement in the discovery and translation of the Judas Gospel. Either tale is a stand-alone novel. Shoved together, neither quite comes off. Too much time is dedicated to the love affair, too little to the gospel, such that the last 50 pages are breathless, as if Mawr is furiously trying to tie all the loose ends together. Nor does it help that Mawr tries to weave together two different sets of flashbacks into the story line.
One of the casualties of this shaky structure is Father Leo himself, who comes across as a curiously wooden figure. We never quite understand who or what he is. Nor is his enigmatic nature, I believe, intentional on Mawr's part. It comes from the fact that Newman isn't fully developed as a literary character, and that in turn comes from the fact that the novel is either too long or too short, depending on your perspective. Either separate its two tales, or extend the narrative far enough to do justice to them both.
Still, Mawr is a wonderful wordsmith who can do beautiful and sometimes breathless things with the language. Moreover, the female characters in this novel are masterfully portrayed, particularly Magda. *The Gospel of Judas* is flawed, but it's well worth a read.
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Darrell Delamaide
5.0 out of 5 stars Many Judases
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2011
While it has a papyrus from a Dead Sea cave that offers a radically different version of Christ's life and the founding of the church, like Da Vinci Code and its numerous imitators, this is not a thriller.

It is a novel about a priest's doubt, a complex drama in which the discovery of a putative "Gospel of Judas" plays a decidedly minor role and only really in the last third of the book. The story of Father Leo Newman, a British papyrologist who lives in Rome, has as much in common with Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest and J.F. Powers' Morte d'Urban as it does with the garden variety biblical thriller.

Mawer in fact has such an understanding of the celibate's mind, the emotional stunting that accompanies the vow of chastity, the fragile foundation in faith for this type of dedication, that it would seem he was in the seminary. If he was, his bio gives no indication of it, so perhaps he has simply gotten to know a number of priests well in his 30 years of living in Rome. In any case, he describes those feelings with considerable insight.

Less surprising is how Mawer can make Rome palpable with a few deft strokes. These are not elaborate descriptions but telling details that betray an intimacy with the sights, sounds and smells of the Eternal City. I've only spent a smattering of weeks in Rome, but the city came rushing back into my memory in Mawer's narrative.

There is more to say about the plot but it is the language that is in the forefront. It is a muscular prose, as vivid in its description of the tangible as the intangible. It is a sophisticated, sinuous narrative that has room for Latin, Italian, Greek, German seamlessly embedded in the text. He works at it, as evidenced in this statement from an interview he gave:

"To write decent novels you have to be in love with the language. You have to feel the texture of it between your fingers, mould it like clay, carve it like marble. Despite all the creative writing programs in the world, I am sure this ability cannot be taught. So I try to use the meanings of words, of place names, of personal names, to inform the narrative."

This is exactly what comes across. In this book, just for instance, Mawer uses the redolent names of Rome's churches to convey the grandeur, the historicity, the plasticity, even, of these monuments -- Santa Maria Maggiore, San Crisogono, Santa Maria dell'Anima, San Lorenzo fuori le mura. His descriptions in various vignettes from the past of the picnics and outings that his mother, the wife of the German ambassador to Italy, made in wartime Rome evoke the splendid ruin of Italy's history. Such pursuit of civilized leisure even as the Axis war machine rains terror on the rest of Europe is reminiscent of Visconti's "The Damned."

Judas Iscariot, the apostle, is the author of the gospel that Leo comes to believe is genuine. But the novel is full of other Judases. Leo's mother betrays her lover in a way that can know no forgiveness (except from the betrayed), and Leo himself earns the title of Judas for his work on the Gospel of Judas.

The details of the gospel are interesting, how it transforms the narrative of Jesus' life simply by shifting a couple of small facts. Whether genuine or forgery, whether a truthful account or deliberate misinformation, the gospel of Judas has little chance of challenging the centuries-old Christian faith. History has too much invested in the received tradition to accept any other truth, even if factual. Yes, the gospel has information that could shake Christianity to its foundations, but it can never earn the credence that would allow this to happen.

Just where the author stands in all this become clear in his account of Leo's "pilgrimage" at the end of the book, which explains why the church will remain triumphant and why it's futile to seek the truth.

Mawer clearly doesn't set out to write bestsellers. This is anything but a potboiler, though it is a compelling read and has its own suspense. Nor will his willingness to question Christianity and make a faith-challenged priest his hero endear him to legions of believers. But the reader doesn't have to identify with Leo. The reader can see him as a flawed, in some ways tragic individual. The Gospel of Judas is a question, not an answer, and the reader can decide where the truth lies.
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Top reviews from other countries

Mrs. Pat
5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and gripping
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2024
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The book arrived quickly and was by an author I had not encountered before - he was recommended to me by a friend. I found the book entertaining and well written, with an unusual story line. I would thoroughly recommend it.
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John Darracott
5.0 out of 5 stars As expected
Reviewed in Canada on April 7, 2019
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As expected
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Mr M Ziprin
3.0 out of 5 stars A reasonable read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 20, 2012
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I had thoroughly enjoyed reading The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and wanted to try more from this author. It was a reasonably good holiday read but I would say nothing more than that. The plot regarding the Gospel felt no more convincing than other more Davinci Code type books and I got a little bored with the war-time parts of the story even though they should have been important to the formation of Father Leo with regard to his mother and his chaldhood. The more recent past of the affair was well put but the constant Mary/Madelaine/etc. references annoyed me eventually. This is much more than a Brown-esque genre book and I certainly learnt a little from it but I call it a reasonable read whilst thinking The Girl Who Fell From The Sky to be an excellent book.
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antilla
5.0 out of 5 stars A magnificent read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 15, 2018
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Father Leo Newman is asked to prove or disprove the validity of an ancient scroll written in the first century AD, purporting to be a true account of the life of Jesus told by Judas Iscariot. If true it will destroy Christian beliefs.
But Father Newman is not only an expert on the deciphering of the writings on ancient scrolls, he is a Roman Catholic priest who has fallen in love with Madeleine, a married woman with a troubled personality.
I was drawn into the book in the first few pages and it captured my imagination. It is beautifully written. I could feel the torment of the relationship and also Leo's shock and concerns about the revelations in the papyrus.
The ending was totally unexpected. The story is not tied up in a convenient bow. It contains all the anguish that is within the story.
I know I could read this again and gain even more from the story. In three words - a magnificent read!
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Judi Moore
4.0 out of 5 stars Faith, sex and death: and, finally, a scary gospel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2016
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This is rather a literary novel, about attitudes to faith,sex and death, masquerading as a 'history & mystery' novel about this (presumably fictitious) gospel. Actually, it doesn't masquerade: the literary part of the book is well advanced when the gospel turns up. As it was for the gospel that I bought the book I found this a little frustrating at first. However, it is beautifully written, Stuff happens (in two separate timelines) is considered and evaluated. Deaths (violent) occur: faiths are tested. So I warmed to the book as it went on and in the end I couldn't put it down. When the gospel material turned up I was spellbound by the knowledge of ancient, religious writings that scholars genuinely appear to have (which we mere mortals are never privy to) and how this enabled them to evaluate the supposed gospel just through a few intelligible words (much of the document having, of course, perished or become illegible over many centuries). My only other caveat is that Mr Mawer changed viewpoint a lot and didn't give clues as to whose head we were in and when we were sufficiently often for this reader. It's a style. And a bugbear of mine. But what is so unlikeable about signposting what is to come for Your Reader? Nevertheless, a fine book.
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