The God of Our Fathers

"In his joyful new book, Aldo Cazzullo invites us, through sparkling prose, to dive into some of the greatest stories ever told."

—James Martin, SJ, New York Times bestselling author of Work in Progress and Learning to Pray

A #1 bestselling sensation in Italy

As a way of connecting with his dying father, Aldo Cazzullo picks up the Bible and rediscovers an illuminating book that "speaks of us," and whose legacy of storytelling formed our modern world.

Until a few generations ago, people of the Western world believed they lived under the watchful eye of God. His existence was as certain as that of the rising sun, and quoting passages and verse from the Bible was common. But that familiarity with the Bible is no longer a mainstay of contemporary life. For Aldo Cazzullo, it isn’t until he finds himself sitting by his dying father’s bed that he revisits the Bible, connecting with both a beloved believer and the text itself. While recognizing its spiritual and religious value, above all he is astounded by the extraordinary power of its storytelling.

Beginning with the Creation, Cazzullo takes us through key stories of the Old Testament, all the while admiring them for their beauty, insights, and mysteries:

• The tale of Joseph, a marvellous bildungsroman and love story, in which God famously speaks only through the veil of dreams
• The descendants of Jesse, the first being David, a king who played the lyre and stood against the most fearsome of the Philistines' troops, Goliath, and the last, Jesus
• Those of its great women—including Judith, Jael, and Esther, who, by killing an evil man or by having him killed, saved millions of just people
• The triumphant ode to love that is the Song of Solomon

Never failing to connect these stories to the present day and taking readers on an illuminating journey to the roots of Western culture and identity, The God of Our Fathers reveals the Bible to be a stunning literary achievement that contains the full breadth of the human experience.

Translated from the Italian by Sylvia Notini