The Fifth Gospel

Mario Pomilio - Translated by Umberto C. Mariani and Alice J. Mariani

Mario Pomilio was a novelist, editor, and literary critic, releasing 8 novels, a book of short stories, and various books of criticism over his career. The Fifth Gospel is Pomilio’s most important work; it marks the culmination of the complex thematic evolution of his work as a whole. It was originally published in Italy in 1975 and won the Napoli Prize and the Maria Cristina Prize. Umberto C. Mariani and Alice J. Mariani have translated it into English for the first time.

While for Mario Pomilio the essential condition of man in our time is markedly our solitude, our alienation, and our sense of having lost control of both the physical universe and of human history (even as science and technology assure us we are gaining it), The Fifth Gospel tells the story of a search for a message of hope and salvation that is presented as realizable. Although the search almost always ends tragically, it is constantly reborn; if its failure can be cause for alienation and despair, its constant revival throughout the centuries is a harbinger of hope.

Hamilton Books

Pages: 298 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-0-7618-6395-3 • eBook • July 2014 • $102.50 • (£79.00)

Subjects: Fiction / Religious, Fiction / Christian / Historical, Fiction / Visionary & Metaphysical, Religion / Christianity / Catholic, Religion / Philosophy

The Fifth Gospel

eBook

Summary

Mario Pomilio was a novelist, editor, and literary critic, releasing 8 novels, a book of short stories, and various books of criticism over his career. The Fifth Gospel is Pomilio’s most important work; it marks the culmination of the complex thematic evolution of his work as a whole. It was originally published in Italy in 1975 and won the Napoli Prize and the Maria Cristina Prize. Umberto C. Mariani and Alice J. Mariani have translated it into English for the first time.

While for Mario Pomilio the essential condition of man in our time is markedly our solitude, our alienation, and our sense of having lost control of both the physical universe and of human history (even as science and technology assure us we are gaining it), The Fifth Gospel tells the story of a search for a message of hope and salvation that is presented as realizable. Although the search almost always ends tragically, it is constantly reborn; if its failure can be cause for alienation and despair, its constant revival throughout the centuries is a harbinger of hope.

Details

Hamilton Books

Pages: 298 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-0-7618-6395-3 • eBook • July 2014 • $102.50 • (£79.00)

Subjects: Fiction / Religious, Fiction / Christian / Historical, Fiction / Visionary & Metaphysical, Religion / Christianity / Catholic, Religion / Philosophy

Author

Mario Pomilio was an author, editor, and literary critic. He was born in 1921 in Orsogna, Italy, and passed away in 1990.

Umberto C. Mariani is professor emeritus in the Italian Department at Rutgers University.

Alice J. Mariani, also retired, holds a PhD in comparative literature from Yale University.

Table of Contents

Introduction
A Letter
The Vivario Manuscript
The Chart of Heaven
The Legends
The Greek Monk
The Reappearances
The Green Branch
The Gospel of the Popes
The Story of Friar Michele, A Minorite
The Banquet of Lyons
The Christ of Guardia
The Profession of Faith of Pierre D’Artois
The Life of the Chevalier Du Breuil
The Justification of the Priest Domenico De Lellis
Letters from My Former Students
A Reply to a Replay
The Fifth Evangelist

Reviews

Praise for the Italian Edition:
This book is about the life of the word that has run through the veins of our civilization for more than twenty centuries, a lively, absorbing book, that narrates the twice-millennial and still unachieved—therefore most timely—quest for this deepest truth of mankind. All intelligent readers, Christian or not, but sensitive to the development of our civilization, will read this great book with pleasure and joy. . . . Pomilio has obviously not tried to write the fifth gospel, he has marvelously explored its absence.
— Robert Kanters, Le Figaro 5-6 Feb. 1977

The Fifth Gospel makes poetry of a story so incredible and so true that the questions posed to truth across the centuries burn more and more intensely, until the author himself seems to feel the anguish of his protagonist.
— Henry Louette, French translator of The Fifth Gospel

The Fifth Gospel

Mario Pomilio - Translated by Umberto C. Mariani and Alice J. Mariani

The Fifth Gospel

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