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Title: Knowledge of Angels by Jill Paton Walsh ISBN: 0-552-99780-3 Publisher: Bantam Pr Ltd Pub. Date: 1998 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.76 (21 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An inspired debate of wits and religion
Comment: "Knowledge of Angels" is one of the most thought evoking books I've read. Set in a time and place that is not our own, it deals with a crucial subject that affects us all. The debate of Relgion and the existence of God is so wonderfully laid out. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys thinking and experiencing a fantastic novel.
Rating: 5
Summary: A highly intelligent fable of ideas
Comment: Jill Paton Walsh's "Knowledge of Angels" should havewon the Booker Prize. It is arguably the most outstanding yetaccessible of the five novels that made the shortlist in 1994. Set in the medievial ages, KOA is a brilliant and highly intelligent fable of ideas. Controversial perhaps, but timeless. Even today, we continue to debate the question of whether the concept of God is innate to man or acquired through the intellect and the socialisation process. In the middle ages, certainly during the times of the infamous Spanish Inquisition, it was heretical to espouse the creed of atheism. The crime was punishable by torture and death. The story of Amara (the wolf child), brought up and suckled by wolves before being returned to human society, was to be the great experiment by which learned scholars of the day sought to prove the existence of God. Palinor, the castaway who hails from a world where people live by the principles of humanism, finds his life endangered when his unconventional ideas threaten the orthodoxy of the day. Paton Walsh's novel isn't even specifically about religion or humanism. It is about the need for human society in its search for truth to understand the confining nature of paradigms, to continually challenge conventional wisdoms and reinvent itself, and to practice tolerance if the search for truth is to be served. Astonishing, yet not. "Knowledge of Angels" is a beautifully crafted and highly entertaining novel of ideas that should be read by those who love good literature. I can't recommend it highly enough. END
Rating: 5
Summary: Tour de Force
Comment: This book cries out for a different rating system - perhaps a 1-10 scale. Even then one would have to reward an "11" for this magnificent tome. I could not find a single flaw in the entire reading - character development and portrayal was realistic yet unforgettable, the setting mesmerizing (one is instantly transported back to the time of the Inquisition and the faith-filled, simple lives of the city dwellers) and the plot was perfect.
I have read criticism that the tale was not realistic or made suppositions and assumptions that are not exactly correct in the historical sense. But what one should remember is that this tale is an allegory, not a documentary. The fictional city is in Spain and the Inquisition is at its high point when a stranger appears. He is intelligent, interesting, and friendly but an unbeliever. He tells of a land in which belief is arbitrary and where one can change their religion - or choose to have no religion at all. This is too much for Church officials for in their eyes murder, torture and lying can be forgiven but also blessed. A trial of sorts is proposed.
Now we have the second story and the joy is how the two are seemlessly weaved into one arc. A child found among the wolves is being raised by nuns. She is not to be given any religious instruction and if she comes to a belief in a Supreme Being the visitor will be found guilty, otherwise he will be judged to be innocent.
The battle is not between atheist and believer. It is a civil war between two schools of thought within Catholicism - the plain folk and their local leaders and a grand inquisitor who employs "unusual" methods for "protecting the faith". The wolf-girl finally is made to make a statement that can be interpreted as belief and Palindo, the visitor, is tortured to confession. When he refuses to follow this up with another confession (which would then validate the previous "confession") he is sentenced to be burned alive at the stake. A lowly follower trades all her material goods for a balm that will bring instant death upon being heated.
The aftermath is a short but appealing denouement. The bishop's assistant announces he cannot believe in a God that seeks obedience through torture. The wolf-girl returns to her solitary mountain home but not before catching a glimpse of a vast naval armada from the foreign land streaming toward the city that burned its citizen. The rewards of sin...
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Title: A Desert in Bohemia by Jill Paton Walsh, Jill Paton Walsh ISBN: 0452282683 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 30 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: A Piece of Justice by Jill Paton Walsh, Jill Paton Walsh ISBN: 031229252X Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: August, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Way It Spozed to Be by James Herndon ISBN: 0867094079 Publisher: Heinemann Publishing Pub. Date: 21 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: "I Won't Learn from You": And Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment by Herbert R. Kohl, Colin Greer ISBN: 1565840968 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: July, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: For the Time Being by Annie Dillard ISBN: 0375703470 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 08 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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