JESUS

A literary life of Jesus written by a novelist and a believer.

Jesus of Nazareth has been described in many ways: a legendary character, an impostor, a sage, a pathological liar, and of course the son of God. “And you, who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks his disciples. Two thousand years later, the question remains and everyone – atheist, skeptic, agnostic or believer – is seeking to answer it. It is as both a novelist and a believer that François Taillandier offers his vision. Sensitive to words, to the construction of narratives and their strength, he returns to the texts that speak of Jesus, the Gospels.
One recurrent question guides his thought: who is telling us what? It is indeed strange to consider that in all probability, the authors of these texts never encountered Jesus. They wrote the story of his life decades after his crucifixion in a language that was not his: Greek. And what are we to think of the facts and beliefs recounted,
such as the Annunciation, the miracle of Cana, the countless healings and the Resurrection?
To approach Jesus, François Taillandier goes back to the original texts in ancient Greek with an attitude of total openness, to the point of courting controversy. In this work, the gaze of the critical reader and that of the “free” Catholic converge so that this presence, this message that changed the course of history, can be extracted from the traditional Christian approach.

Novelist FRANÇOIS TAILLANDIER is best known for writing Anielka (winner of the French Academy novel prize, Stock, 1999) and a suite in five volumes, La Grande Intrigue (The great intrigue, Stock, 2005-2009). He is also the author of L'Ecriture du monde (Scripture of the world, Stock, 2013), La Croix et le croissant (The Cross and the Crescent, Stock, 2014) and Solstice (Stock,2015) a series hailed by the press as an outstanding achievement in the historical novel category.