Christ the Lord

Anne Rice's most ambitious work - a novel, based on the gospels, about the life of Jesus. He comes into the world, child of a virgin birth, celebrated by angels singing to shepherds, and is visited by magi from the east. He is God and Man and grows up to perform miracles - healing the sick, driving out demons, feeding a multitude with only a few loaves and fishes. He can walk on water. He is cruelly executed, but rises from the dead, coming back to his frightened followers to start a religion that will, within two and a half centuries, encompass the entire Western world. All this - accomplished by God Man - is the material of the novel: The novel is divided into three sections. Book One, The Word Made Flesh, begins with Jesus at age six becoming aware of his extraordinary powers and follows him through his Baptism at aged 30, his forty day fast in the desert, his temptation by Satan, his receiving the Spirit and going out into the world on his inexorable path. Book Two, Behold the Lamb of God. We see his ministry during the next two-three years, the mounting tension with authorities in Jerusalem, his own realisation of what he must do, and his fateful decision to enter Jerusalem at the Passover even though he knows the authorities (the Sanhedrin) have condemned him in absentia. Book Three, The Way, The Truth And The Life. The fatal Passover, the betrayal of Jesus, his arrest, his execution, his resurrection and subsequent appearances, and finally his ascension into heaven.