Kenogaia (A Gnostic Tale)

The “genre” of the modern Gnostic novel encompasses an especially eclectic range of works. With this book—a fantasy by turns dark, absurd, comic, frantic, and lyrical—David Bentley Hart joins a company that includes figures as diverse as Georges Bernanos, Anatole France, David Lindsay, Philip K. Dick, Patrick White, Umberto Eco, William Gaddis, Harold Bloom, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, John Crowley, and Philip Pullman. In Kenogaia, a clockwork universe, an oppressive global society of ever-present surveillance, and the coming of age of its protagonist, Michael Ambrosius, are all disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious child from beyond the stars. Modeled on the Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl, Hart’s taleis an imaginative exploration of the relation between good and evil, the difference between reality and illusion, the struggle to live life in truth, and the nature of spiritual existence. In these pages, Hart emerges as a master of mythopoesis even while spinning out a rollicking full-on adventure about friendship, loyalty, and the rescue of true goodness from a universe darkened by delusion.“If you’ve ever sensed, deep down, that the world you think you inhabit is a screen between you and divine reality, you are already primed for what David Bentley Hart has lovingly prepared for us in Kenogaia.”—CRAIG LUCAS“David Hart’s Kenogaia is many things—gnostic fairytale, satire of ecclesial hierarchy, anarchist comedy of terrors. But mostly, it is a rollicking good story.”—MICHAEL ROBBINS“Kenogaia (A Gnostic Tale) is the opus of a thinker at the height of his abilities, a masterful embodiment of the philosophical novel, and a perfect synthesis of fiction and metaphysics.”—ED SIMON“What a book! I raise my phosphorion in salute to Kenogaia.”—PETER O’LEARY“Kenogaia is a work of outstanding literary craftsmanship, exuberant imagination, and rare religious insight.”—COSTICA BRADATAN“Written in evocative prose that wears its learning lightly and combines fairy tale simplicity with the author’s inimitable flashes of verbal flair, Kenogaia is an enchanting work.”—JAKOB ZIGURAS Read more