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SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 MAN BOOKER PRIZE!
From the beloved gay Irish author of The Blackwater Lightship and The Empty Family comes a short, powerful novel about one of the most famous mothers in history.
In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son's crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel, her keepers. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was worth it'; nor that the group of misfits he gathered around him, were holy disciples. In a voice that is both tender and filled with rage, The Testament of Mary tells the story of the cataclysmic event which led to an overpowering grief.
For Mary, her son has been lost to the world, and now, living in exile and in fear, she tries to piece together the memories of the events that led to her son's brutal death. To her he was a vulnerable figure, surrounded by men who could not be trusted, living in a time of turmoil and change. Mary judges herself ruthlessly − she did not stay at the foot of the Cross until her son died but fled, to save herself. As her life and her suffering begin to acquire the resonance of myth, Mary struggles to break the silence surrounding what she knows to have happened. In her effort to tell the truth in all its gnarled complexity, she slowly emerges as a figure of immense moral stature as well as a woman from history rendered now as fully human.
While there is no gay content, this tour de force of imagination and language is another major work by one of the English language's most celebrated gay writers.
Author: Colm Toibin
Hardcover, 112 Pages, Published 2012