City of God: A Novel

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 From the Hardcover edition 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