The Fire Gospel (The Myths) - Hardcover

"The Crimson Petal and the White is a marvel, an engaging whale of a novel."

"Faber's writing is so dizzyingly accomplished that he is able to convince you that, just sometimes, the old stories really are the best ones."

"The Crimson Petal and the White [is] a book so vigorous and preternaturally delightful that a stylish brio enlivens even its weather reports. . . . A big, sexy, bravura novel that is destined to be surpassingly popular . . . wildly entertaining." -- Janet Maslin

"The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber's bulging, bawdy Victorian epic, is a gloves-off kind of novel, one not to be passed along lightly to your grandmother. Cocky and brilliant, amused and angry, the author is rightfully earning comparisons to observer extraordinaire Charles Dickens."

"Nothing could have prepared [Faber's] readers for the sweep and subtlety of The Crimson Petal and the White. . . . Faber's is an immensely difficult project, and to carry it off he returns to the self-conscious reforming zeal, the bracing ethical assurance, the heartbreaking generosity and the sly rhetorical tricks of the great Victorian novelist."

"The Crimson Petal and the White [is] a burgeoning, buxom, neo-Victorian literary bodice-ripper about a prostitute in 1870s London. . . . Faber, a scholar of nineteenth-century culture and literature, shows his debt to Dickens, Balzac, and Stendhal. . . . Faber's tour de force is an enormously readable saga . . . stuffed with vivid characters. . . . The Crimson Petal and the White is escapist literature in the best sense."

Theo Griepenkerl, a Canadian linguistics scholar with little to lose in life, is sent to Iraq in search of treasures that may have survived the destruction and looting of the war. While visiting a museum in Mosul there's a bombing, and in the aftermath he finds nine papyrus scrolls tucked in the belly of a bas-relief sculpture that have been perfectly preserved for more than two thousand years. After smuggling them out of Iraq and translating them from Aramaic, Theo realizes the extent of his career-making find, for he is in possession of the Fifth Gospel, and it offers a shocking and incomparable eyewitness account of Christ's crucifixion and last days on Earth.
Nakedly ambitious and recently dumped by his girlfriend, Theo sets out to share his discovery with the world in the form of a headline-grabbing U.S. book tour. Caught in the throes of his newfound fame, Theo fails to consider the global and cultural ramifications his discovery will have with God-fearing folks and religious zealots worldwide.
A tour through sensationalist society, The Fire Gospel is a provocative novel about the power of words to resonate across centuries, and their continued ability to inspire and disrupt in equal measure.