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City of God

In his workbook, a New York City novelist records the contents of his teeming brain -- sketches for stories, accounts of his love affairs, riffs on the meanings of popular songs, ideas for movies, obsessions with cosmic processes. He is a virtual repository of the predominant ideas and historical disasters of the age. But now he has found a story he thinks may become his next novel: The large brass cross that hung behind the altar of St. Timothy's, a run-down Episcopal church in lower Manhattan, has disappeared ... and even more mysteriously reappeared on the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism, on the Upper West Side. The church's maverick rector and the young woman rabbi who leads the synagogue are trying to learn who committed this strange double act of desecration and why. Befriending them, the novelist finds that their struggles with their respective traditions are relevant to the case. Into his workbook go his taped interviews, insights, preliminary drafts ... and as he joins the clerics in pursuit of the mystery, it broadens to implicate a large cast of vividly drawn characters -- including scientists, war veterans, prelates, Holocaust survivors, cabinet members, theologians, New York Times reporters, filmmakers, and crooners -- in what proves to be a quest for an authentic spirituality at the end of this tortured century.

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about

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alternateName

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  • "City of God"
  • "City of God"@pl

author

contributor

creator

description

http://schema.org/description

  • "Als in New York een kruis van een kerkdak verdwijnt en weer opduikt op het dak van een synagoge, is dat aanleiding tot bespiegelingen over taal, wereld en god."
  • "The theft and mysterious reappearance of a cross from a Manhattan church precipitates a hunt for the culprits that will soon uncover a strange prophecy about a rebirth of the United States."
  • "In his workbook, a New York City novelist records the contents of his teeming brain -- sketches for stories, accounts of his love affairs, riffs on the meanings of popular songs, ideas for movies, obsessions with cosmic processes. He is a virtual repository of the predominant ideas and historical disasters of the age. But now he has found a story he thinks may become his next novel: The large brass cross that hung behind the altar of St. Timothy's, a run-down Episcopal church in lower Manhattan, has disappeared ... and even more mysteriously reappeared on the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism, on the Upper West Side. The church's maverick rector and the young woman rabbi who leads the synagogue are trying to learn who committed this strange double act of desecration and why. Befriending them, the novelist finds that their struggles with their respective traditions are relevant to the case. Into his workbook go his taped interviews, insights, preliminary drafts ... and as he joins the clerics in pursuit of the mystery, it broadens to implicate a large cast of vividly drawn characters -- including scientists, war veterans, prelates, Holocaust survivors, cabinet members, theologians, New York Times reporters, filmmakers, and crooners -- in what proves to be a quest for an authentic spirituality at the end of this tortured century."@en
  • ""EL Doctorow's City of God starts off not merely with a bang but with the big bang itself, that "great expansive flowering, a silent flash into being in a second or two of the entire outrushing universe". It doesn't remain on this cosmic plane throughout. There's a mystery here, along with a romance, a chilling Holocaust narrative and a deep-focus portrait of fin-de-siécle Manhattan. In the early pages of the novel, an enormous brass cross is pilfered from a church on the Lower East Side. Father Thomas Pemberton of St Timothy's promptly sets off in search of it, dubbing himself the Divinity Detective. Yet he suspects from the start that this is no ordinary theft, with no ordinary solution. The cross eventually turns up on the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism, a tiny Manhattan institution to which Pemberton has clearly been led by fate. His encounter with the synagogue's rabbinical duo -- a husband-and-wife team struggling to reclaim a pre-scriptural state of "unmediated awe"--Transforms his life. It also destroys what's left of his conventional Christian belief. As his relationship with Judaism deepens, he discards the clerical collar altogether and embarks upon a penitential exploration of the Holocaust -- which in turn allows Doctorow to loop his narrative back and forth between several generations of (mostly) Jew and Gentile. City of God is a marvellous hybrid which includes a meta-fictional framework (i.e., an author-as-character with a rather Doctorovian CV), an ongoing rumination on city life and a dozen other major strands and minor players. There is an undeniable power to the way Doctorow makes his fictional worlds collide, setting off all manner of historical and philosophical conflagrations. At one point he imagines "the totality of intimate human narrations/composing a hymn to enlightenment/if that were possible". A tall order, yes. But despite its occasional longueurs, City of God suggests that it is possible indeed." -- from www.amazon.co.uk (Jan. 30, 2011)."
  • "The large brass cross that hung in lower Manhattan disappeared, then mysteriously reappeared on the roof of the Synagogue's for Evolutionary Judaism on the Upper West."@en

genre

http://schema.org/genre

  • "Spanish language materials"
  • "Erzählende Literatur: Gegenwartsliteratur ab 1945"
  • "Powieść amerykańska"
  • "Belletristische Darstellung"
  • "Powieść amerykańska"@pl
  • "Romans (teksten)"
  • "Fiction"
  • "Fiction"@en
  • "Religious fiction"
  • "Religious fiction"@en
  • "Spanish fiction"
  • "Electronic books"
  • "Electronic books"@en
  • "American fiction"@he
  • "American fiction"
  • "Americké romány"

name

http://schema.org/name

  • "Cité de Dieu : roman"
  • "City of God"@en
  • "City of God"
  • "La città di Dio"@it
  • "La città di Dio"
  • "City of God : by E.L. Doctorow"
  • "Miasto Boze"
  • "Boží obec : román"
  • "Miasto boże"
  • "Miastro Boze"
  • "De stad Gods : roman"
  • "עיר האלוהים"
  • "<&gt"@he
  • "City of God : a novel"
  • "City of God : a novel"@en
  • "La ciudad de Dios"
  • "La ciudad de Dios"@es
  • "Miasto Boże"@pl
  • "City of God a novel"
  • "City of God a novel"@en
  • "City of God : Roman"
  • "Ciudad de dios"
  • "La Ciudad de Dios"
  • "City of God Roman"
  • "Grad Bozhiĭ : roman"
  • "A cidade de Deus"
  • "ʻIr ha-Elohim"
  • "Cité de Dieu"
  • "City of god : a novel"
  • "City of god : a novel /\cE. L. Doctorow"@en

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