Product Description

The appearance of two outsiders on a Mediterranean island - one a castaway and atheist, the other a child suckled by wolves and knowing nothing of God - find themselves the subjects of a bizarre experiment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26202 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 283 pages

From the Publisher
reviews
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

'Remarkable…Utterly absorbing…richly detailed and finely imagined' Sunday Telegraph

'A compelling medieval fable, written from the heart and melded to a driving narrative which never once loses its tremendous pace' Guardian

'This remarkable novel resembles an illuminated manuscript mapped with angels and mountains and signposts, an allegory for today and yesterday too. A beautiful, unsettling moral fiction about virtue and intolerance' Observer

'The lucidity of Jill Paton Walsh's style and the dexerity of the narrative are such that her book reads more like a good thriller than a weighty novel of ideas…An ingenious fable' The Times

'An irresistible blend of intellect and passion' Mail on Sunday

From the Back Cover
It is, perhaps, the fifteenth century and the ordered tranquillity of a Mediterranean island is about to be shattered by the appearance of two outsiders: one, a castaway, plucked from the sea by fishermen, whose beliefs represent a challenge to the established order; the other, a child abandoned by her mother and suckled by wolves, who knows nothing of the precarious relationship between Church and State but whose innocence will become the subject of a dangerous experiment.

But the arrival of the Inquisition on the island creates a darker, more threatening force which will transform what has been a philosophical game of chess into a matter of life and death...

About the Author
Jill Paton Walsh
Jill Paton Walsh was educated at St Michael's Convent, North Finchley, and at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is the author of several highly praised adult novels: Lapsing, A School For Lovers, Knowledge of Angels, which was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize, Goldengrove Unleaving, The Serpentine Cave and A Desert in Bohemia. She has also won many awards for her children's literature, including the Whitbread Prize, the Universe Prize and the Smarties Award. She has three children and lives in Cambridge.

Customer Reviews

Brave, apt and eloquent
My memory of the engaging narrative style remains with me long after I have read the book. No word is superfluous yet the book flows from beginning to end and carries the reader with it. Its often complex ideas are expessed eloquently, leaving the reader to appreciate the implications.
It may be criticised as a forceful view of religion where one case is stated and little room is left for the reader's religious beliefs. However, the repression and cruelties against which it fights are undertaken in the name of absolute conformity to the doctrines of the Church, so that it appears to me that the prevailing argument is not against religion but rather against the use of beliefs to justify inhumane acts.
Two of the most awesome accomplishments are the deployment of Josefa (wait for it...!) and the ending, which left me breathless and unwilling to destroy the atmosphere (even by speaking!) for some time. I am thrilled.

A tapestry of moral questions
I have just returned to Knowledge of Angels after a 7 year break and found it just as compelling and beautifully written as I did the first time I read it some 10 years ago. The same dilemmas still haunt me. The book details the interwoven stories of a child reared by wolves in the mountains and a man found swimming far out at sea who claims to come from a country no one has heard of and where religious allegiance is a matter of personal conscience. They become the subject of an attempt to discover if knowledge of God is innate. Paton Walsh weaves the strands together using language that creates a mental medaevil book of hours full of fields of peasants bent double over their hoes and little wayside shrines. The book does not pretend to ape reality. Palinor, her swimming atheist, is clearly a cipher of our times and it is the clash of our morality with that of 1450 that provides the dramatic tension. It is not a perfect book but one that stimulates and stays with you. I have yet to give it to anyone who has not been as gripped as I have been (or at least owned up to it). It remains firmly in my top 10 books ever and I am still giving copies away.

All things considered, still one of the best books I've read
I first read this book in 1998, and have been reading it ever since, but it's not what you might think; my adoration has waned slightly.

I admit, at first I was blown away. This was the book in my head, that I had hoped to write one day - an exploration of human nature within both geological confines and the confines of a religion full of uncompromising absolutes. The somewhat romantic idea of a newly-discovered child raised by wolves combined with a 'fate' of some sort washing an atheist on to the Catholic island set the fuse for large explosions later, the fate of one dependent on the other, but also dependent on the actions of some very flawed human beings. I was enthralled. I read it again and again until I knew it absolutely inside out. I could see the way it was crafted, exactly why characters said and did what they did.

That was probably where my problems began. I realised that, although quite brilliant, Knowledge of Angels did nothing more than required to tie all the ends of the plot. I began to recognise the sources used, for example for the philosophical discussions between the atheist Palinor and deeply religious Beneditx, as of fairly limited origin - Thomas Aquinas features heavily. Actions and reactions seemed inevitable once the outcome of the plot was known - right down to the portrayal of the athiest as 'ultra human' with human apetites, concetrating on chapter 22 but also evident on previous occasions, like when the fishermen's wives dress him after his ordeal in the sea and make 'unfavourable comparisons' with their spouses' anatomy. The reader is being led, entirely, and there is little room for interpretation. This, after what must be my hundreth reading of the book, has made it seem contrived, manufactured perhaps, lacking the depth I once saw. I found it held no surprises once it had been deconstructed.

But, inevitability aside, there are many things I still love about this book. Most of all I love the way the imagery of the church is used, well, against a religion of absolutes. The sight of Christ on the cross in the chapel terrifies the cleaned-up wolf-child, inviting us to think hard about what such a large proportion of the world are holding in reverence. I am a big fan of the colours and details of Palinor's execution - it is like they are burning Christ themselves. And the ultimate message? Absolutes cannot be applied to people, least of all by other people.

It still holds a great significance for me, as it has shaped not only the way I think about writing, but the way I think about the world.