Book dossier

Knowledge of Angels

by Jill Paton Walsh

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.