Evangile de Jimmy (L') [French]

By Didier van Cauwelaert

421pages. in8. Broché jaquette. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: French
• ISBN: 2226154973
• ISBN13: 9782226154972
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Albin Michel
• Length: 432 Pages

Customer Reviews

Funny, disturbing, surreal, bizarre, brilliant.

The French writer Didier van Cauwelaert deserves to have more of his novels translated into English; in fact, I would personally love to be considered by his publishers for this job! His works share a preoccupation with questions of confused personal identity. Many of his protagonists find themselves in bizarre situations, usually not of their own making, in which their identity is threatened, questioned, contested, made Other. A good dose of black humour is almost always part of the surreal, brilliant literary cocktail offered by van Cauwelaert. 'The Gospel According to Jimmy' (my suggested translation for the title of this novel) is one of my personal favourites of all of the books written to date by this creative, controversial novelist. An American swimming pool cleaner in a near-future United States of America, one day has his existence turned upside down when he discovers, courtesy of American secret services and the US presidency, that he is actually the clone of Jesus Christ (as you do). In a top secret experiment in the early 1990s, some of the DNA from the Shroud of Turin was somehow stolen, and cloned. The resulting clone was brought up initially in a children's home, from which he disappeared following a mysterious fire. Following years during which he is unaware of his true identity, and during which the US Government is unable to track him down, he is found and apprised of his incredible origins. The US Presidency has literally Messianic ambitions for Jimmy. They intend to present him to the world as the second coming of Christ, but to thereby cynically use him as a political instrument. To reveal any further developments would be to spoil the reading experience, but suffice it to say that the scenario outlined in this review goes on to take many bizarre turns, as you would expect from this writer, who is nothing if not original and creative, never boring, and always managing to produce a compelling page-turner. One of the burning questions raised throughout this narrative is whether Jimmy will, in fact, turn out to be truly the reincarnation of the Christ. Related to this question are speculations on the authenticity of the Shroud of Turnin, and van Cauwelaert has certainly done his scientific research in order to use the novel as a backdrop to occasionally discuss this controversial question. In addition, the USA of this novel happens to have its first gay President, who hopes to marry the First Boyfriend. This is not the first time van Cauwelaert has explored themes of identity and religion in a single work: his novel of a few years back, 'L'Apparition', is equally worth reading if you happen to enjoy the story of Jimmy/Jesus. Both novels share the image of a religious tunic, and a central character who has a link with a miraculous, religious, centuries-old past. Other novels by this author are not religious in theme, but all describe characters in search of their true identity, evolving in Kafkaesque worlds where t