"[Ricci's] latest book is a stunning historical novel that will only enhance his high reputation . . . An absolutely beautiful, rigorously intelligent, fiercely thoughtful fictional biography." — Booklist, starred review
"Ricci transcends the stale confines of 'the historical Jesus' debate and invites us into that imaginative region where Jesus finds a living context." — Dr. Bruce Chilton, director, Institute for Advanced Theology, Bard College, and author of
Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography
"When I considered what it was in Yeshua that had held me to him, it seemed exactly the hope of something new: a new sort of man, a new way of seeing things . . . Tell me your secret, I had wanted to say to him, tell me, make me new. And even now, though I had left him, I often saw him beckoning before me as towards a doorway he would have had me pass through, from darkness to light." — from Testament
Who was Jesus of Nazareth? In Testament, Nino Ricci turns the gifts that have won him acclaim as a novelist to reimagining the life of the man Christians know as the Son of God, exploring the ways in which his story might have been shaped by the time and place in which he lived. The result is a captivating, provocative, and moving account that will redefine the way we look at the possibilities of history and parable.
As seen through the eyes of four people who knew him — and colored by each narrator's own beliefs and desires — the Jesus of Testament is a complex and charismatic teacher, alternately compassionate and difficult but always able to lead his followers to a greater understanding of the world within and around them. Those followers include
• Yihuda of Qiryat (Judas), a political dissident whose challenging conversations with Jesus cause him to question his own convictions;
• Miryam of Migdal (Mary Magdalene), a disciple whose attraction to Jesus as a teacher and a man gives her a modicum of independence from her cloistered life;
• Miryam (Mary), his mother, whose story gives insight into Jesus' difficult past and his insatiable search for spiritual truth; and
• Simon of Gergesa, a young Syrian shepherd who travels to Jerusalem with Jesus and witnesses his heartbreaking fate.
In a brilliantly depicted time of social, religious, and political unrest, Jesus' every action and utterance becomes the stuff of controversy, evoking strong visceral reactions from everyone he encounters. In this way, we see how the life of a man who possessed "that quality that made one feel there was something, still, some bit of hope, some secret he might reveal that would make the world over" might have grown and been shaped over time in the retelling, becoming the tale we recognize today as gospel.
Nino Ricci's best-selling trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels — Lives of the Saints (soon to be a motion picture starring Sophia Loren), In a Glass House, and Where She Has Gone — won him widespread international attention and a multitude of awards in his native Canada. Historically nuanced and striking in its vision of the man whose teachings have touched every corner of Western civilization, Testament is his most passionate and engrossing work yet.
Nino Ricci's debut novel, Lives of the Saints (published in the United States as The Book of Saints), was an international bestseller and won the Governor General's Award for fiction, the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the F. G. Bressani Prize. The New York Times Book Review praised it as "an extraordinary story — brooding and ironic, suffused with yearning, tender and lucid and gritty." The first book in a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels, it was followed by In a Glass House and Where She Has Gone, a finalist for the Giller Prize. Ricci lives in Toronto.
"This is a remarkable work — immensely savvy about the nature of human longing, compassionate about human failure, and illuminating about the trajectory of the hero. It's beautifully written, an endeavor both humble and risky." — Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams
"Testament is a remarkable retelling of the Jesus story, doing what great art always does — making what is familiar suddenly fresh, daring, challenging. You will never think of the characters of the gospel accounts in the same way again, which is the good news of this stunning novel." — Reverend Stephen Kendrick, senior minister, First and Second Church, Boston
"A bold and brilliant premise for a novel, and Ricci doesn't disappoint. His spare, lyrical prose reflects the extreme terrain of Palestine under the Romans . . . and the rugged psychological landscape that the narrators traverse . . . With this novel, Ricci deserves legions of new readers." — Montreal Gazette
"The sum of these various reminiscences makes a highly readable narrative . . . There is, moreover, an element of suspense that is sustained throughout the novel despite — or even because of — the universally known outcome of Jesus' career." — Toronto Star
"Ricci has given us a contemporary Jesus. Like a palimpsest, with each fresh image superimposed on earlier images, Ricci's Jesus testifies to the inexhaustible power of story, reminding us that enduring myths are not windows through which we view objective truths, but mirrors framing our own evanescent mortality and morality plays." — Globe and Mail
"Testament, a refracted biography of Jesus, becomes too an examination of storytelling itself, for what is Jesus of Nazareth if not a teller of stories? . . . From the good book Ricci has fashioned a great story." — Quill and Quire
"Compelling . . . balances history and parable, political conflict and religious faith." — Ottawa Citizen
It won't be long, of course, before everyone has forgotten the man, or remembers only the trouble he had with his women or how he died a criminal or that he was a bastard, which sooner or later is sure to get out. But however things get remembered, you can be certain it won't be how they actually were, since one man will change a bit of this to suit his fancy, and one a bit of that, and another will spice it up to make a better story of it. And by and by the truth of the thing will get clouded, and he'll simply be a yarn you tell to your children. And something will be lost then because he was a man of wisdom, the more so when even someone like me, who when I met him didn't know more than when the crops came up and how many sheep it took to buy a bride, had come to understand something of him in the end . . .
I remembered the vision that Jesus had told us about after he'd raised Elazar. And for a moment it was as if some curtain had been pushed aside in my head and I had a glimpse of something I understood but couldn't have put into words, like some beautiful thing, so beautiful it took your breath away, that you saw for an instant through a gateway or a door, then was gone.
I suppose Jeus was like that for me, something I saw as if in the twinkling of an eye. It was just the week or so that I was with him, in the end, and what was that but half a breath in the middle of all the years of my life. But still when I look out at the fields now or at the sheep grazing on the bit of pasture that overlooks the lake, a sort of haze seems to come off things that wasn't there before, as if I'm expecting something good to come along at any minute, though I couldn't tell you what it is. And though I'm happy enough to be at home, I'll never see the likes of the times I had them, for better and worse, when it seemed that every good and ill that could come to a man, and every wonder and devilry, had passed in front of me.
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