City of God, E.L. Doctorow
City of God, E.L. Doctorow
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City of God

Author: E.L. Doctorow

Narrator: John Rubinstein

Unabridged: 12 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/04/2014


Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
With brilliant and audacious strokes, E. L. Doctorow creates a breathtaking collage of memories, events, visions, and provocative thought, all centered on an idea of the modern reality of God. At the heart of this stylistically daring tour de force is a detective story about a cross that vanishes from a rundown Episcopal church in lower Manhattan only to reappear on the roof of an Upper West Side synagogue. Intrigued by the mystery—and by the maverick rector and the young rabbi investigating the strange act of desecration—is a well-known novelist, whose capacious brain is a virtual repository for the ideas and disasters of the age.
 
Daringly poised at the junction of the sacred and the profane, filled with the sights and sounds of New York, and encompassing a large cast of vividly drawn characters including theologians, scientists, Holocaust survivors, and war veterans, City of God is a monumental work of spiritual reflection, philosophy, and history by America’s preeminent novelist and chronicler of our time.
 
Praise for City of God
 
“A grander perspective on the universe . . . a novel that sets its sights on God.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“Dazzling . . . The true miracle of City of God is the way its disparate parts fuse into a consistently enthralling and suspenseful whole.”—Time
 
“Blooms with humor, and a humanity that carries triumphant as intelligent a novel as one might hope to find these days.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“Radiates [with] panoramic ambition and spiritual incandescence.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“One of the greatest American novels of the past fifty years . . . Reading City of God restores one’s faith in literature.”—The Houston Chronicle

About The Author

E. L. Doctorow’s works of fiction include Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, City of God, The March, Homer & Langley, and Andrew’s Brain. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN/ Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career places him in the highest rank of American literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction. In 2014 he was honored with the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit

City of God is mosaic in structure and polyphonic in narration. City of God is a piece of postmodern theology and theosophy or of heresy and sacrilege if you please. Lord, there is something so exhausted about the NY waterfront, as if the smell of the sea were oil, as if boats were buses, as if all h......more

Goodreads review by Fabian

I wouldn't wish this upon my most vilest of enemies. It reads like a 600 page collection of sloppily unpretty mixed media; too bad it doesn't make one SINGLE IMPRESSION. Doctorow takes on very heavy stuff (...RELIGION!!!!) & gives us an even heavier account rife with questions... more questions. YUC......more

Goodreads review by robin

God In New York City The late E.L, Doctorow's turn-of-the century novel "City of God" (2001) explores the nature of religious faith for those for whom traditional forms of religion have become difficult or lost their meaning. The book straddles the line drawn by some people between religion (in the s......more

The obscure story-telling style of this book actually comes off perfectly for the story matter. In this book the author is looking for God. And it is a great discussion! Partially through some narrative threads, partially through thoughts and observations taken from science, not-so-pop culture. The......more


Quotes

“A grander perspective on the universe . . . a novel that sets its sights on God.”The Wall Street Journal
 
“Dazzling . . . The true miracle of City of God is the way its disparate parts fuse into a consistently enthralling and suspenseful whole.”Time
 
“Blooms with humor, and a humanity that carries triumphant as intelligent a novel as one might hope to find these days.”Los Angeles Times
 
“Radiates [with] panoramic ambition and spiritual incandescence.”Chicago Tribune
 
“One of the greatest American novels of the past fifty years . . . Reading City of God restores one’s faith in literature.”The Houston Chronicle


Awards

  • National Humanities Medal