Knowledge of Angels

Paton Walsh, Jill

4

1,709 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 0395686660 ISBN 13: 9780395686669

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994

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.

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From the Publisher:

"Praised by Ursula K. Le Guin as a "disturbing and beautiful novel of ideas," Knowledge Of Angels is an absorbing read that explores timeless conflicts between tolerance and moral certainty, between loving kindness and murderous cruelty. Capturing the mood of William Golding's haunting medieval love story, The Spire, Knowledge Of Angels is a suspenseful fable set on a mythical island in the time of the Inquisition, a time of unquestionable and unquestioned faith and unmerciful justice. The fable spins a tale of two outcasts: a wild, flesh-eating wolf child and a foreign prince, captured separately and taken to the cardinal prince of the island. The wolf girl is remanded to a nunnery, where her caretakers are ordered to teach her to speak but not to speak of God, so that the cardinal can ask her if God exists. On her answer depends the life of the heretic prince, condemned because he does not believe in God. The federal creature and the elegant paladin are used as pawns by the town's religious council to answer the question of whether or not believing in God is an inherent part of being human.

"[Its] lapidary prose leads the enchanted and unsuspecting reader from escapism to self- scrutiny."--The New Yorker.

"An illuminated and illuminating book [that] advances to a brilliant and relentless conclusion."--New York Newsday.

"A novel set in a time and place other than the here and now, but a novel of importance to the here and now-one that prompts us to grapple with the great questions of trust, faith, understanding. A soul-compelling book that will touch many readers deeply."--Robert Coles, author of The Spiritual Life Of Children.

About the Author:

Jill Paton Walsh has lectured at the Library of Congress and taught at Simmons College.

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