* A literary event: one of the world's greatest novelists confronts the greatest story ever told - and in the first person

For 2,000 years, the brief ministry of a young Nazarene preacher has remained the largest single determinant of Western civilisation's triumphs and disasters. In THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON, Norman Mailer gives the protagonist of one of the greatest tragedies of all time a chance to tell the story of his life in his own words. 'Is God speaking to me?' Jesus asks, 'or am I hearing voices? If the voices are from God, why has he chosen me as His son? and if they are not from God, then who gave me the power to perform these miracles?' This is a gripping account of a man thrust forward by the visions he receives and the miracles he enacts until he has come to the very limit of human possibilities. In THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON, one of the world's greatest living writers has brought us a remarkable book - by turns poetic and tragic and, to our surprise and pleasure, suspenseful.

Mailer has studied the gospels with great care, and his imaginging of Jesu s' story is both respectful and respectfully inventive. Most compelling, he has tried to make sense of Jesu s' full humanity, shrewdly giving us a son of God whose evolving unders