Scan barcode
A review by mikelchartier
The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch
5.0
Despite its poorly veiled Christian propaganda this book is at the very least on my top ten. It's surreal, it's inviting, it's exciting. The plot development takes different turns in every chapter and despite the cannonistic, dogmatic and initially seemingly superfluous narration by God's 'angels' they actually end up being crucial to the story. I will warn that it's easy to get aggravated by such narration as giving God credit for killing Nietzche by means of syphilis for his ubiquitous "God is dead" statements, but as previously stated there is a lot of proselytising for the church going on.
What's most interesting about this astounding tome is that at some point or another nearly every character is a main character. Be it (spoiler alert) Max and Onno's first meeting in the cold streets to them both somehow impregnating Ada, who turns comatose never to wake up, and finally Quinten; the savant and seeming sociopath son of God and man sent to give contemporary society what it deserves.
The most reasonable understanding of this book I've come to is that this apparent God (who never characterizes Itself in the book) is not the generally loving and caring God The New Testament will have most Christians believe, but a childishly vengefull God who takes away the most important gift man has ever received as punishment for the debaucherous entropy the human race has come to. This general malaise isn't displayed until the very end, but is almost cathartic in its application as reward for getting that far in a remarkably complex and ambiguous story.
.....not to mention the dildo which graces the cover of my edition
What's most interesting about this astounding tome is that at some point or another nearly every character is a main character. Be it (spoiler alert) Max and Onno's first meeting in the cold streets to them both somehow impregnating Ada, who turns comatose never to wake up, and finally Quinten; the savant and seeming sociopath son of God and man sent to give contemporary society what it deserves.
The most reasonable understanding of this book I've come to is that this apparent God (who never characterizes Itself in the book) is not the generally loving and caring God The New Testament will have most Christians believe, but a childishly vengefull God who takes away the most important gift man has ever received as punishment for the debaucherous entropy the human race has come to. This general malaise isn't displayed until the very end, but is almost cathartic in its application as reward for getting that far in a remarkably complex and ambiguous story.
.....not to mention the dildo which graces the cover of my edition