Product Description

From a mind-blowing new talent, an audacious novel that imagines the world after God takes human form and dies

When God descends to Earth as a Dinka woman from Sudan and subsequently dies in the Darfur desert, the result is a world both bizarrely new yet eerily familiar. In Ron Currie’s provocative, wise, and emotionally resonant novel we meet God himself; the Dinka woman whose mortality He must suffer when He inhabits her body; people all over the world coping with the devastating news of God’s demise; a group of young men who, fearing the end of the world, take fate into their own hands; mental patients who insist that a god still exists; armies taking up the eternal war between fate and free will; and parents who, in the absence of a deity and the "lack of anything to do on Sundays," worship their children. On the surface, this is a world utterly transformed—yet certain things remain unchanged: protective parents clash with willful, idealistic teenagers; idols are exalted; small-town rumor mills run unabated; and children often don’t realize how to forgive their parents until it’s too late.

In God Is Dead, Currie brings together a prescient satirical gift worthy of Jonathan Swift, the raw appeal of Chuck Palahniuk’s blackest comedy, and the thought-provoking ethical questions of Kurt Vonnegut, all with a light touch, empathy, and wisdom that make for an exhilarating reading experience. Offbeat yet accessible, God Is Dead is an exciting debut from a fresh new voice in contemporary fiction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #381303 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A bleak dystopian future is tempered with moments of possibility in story writer Currie's debut novel, in which a sick and wounded Dinka woman arrives at a refugee camp in Darfur, searching for her lost brother. The woman is God, come to Earth in human form to make apologies to the Sudanese, over whose fate He is, "due to an implacable polytheistic bureaucracy, completely powerless." When God is gunned down, news of His death spreads quickly around the globe and provides the jumping-off point for the subsequent short story–like chapters that reveal what happens in a post-God world: suicide rates skyrocket (especially among clergy members), riots and mass looting erupt and the pack of feral dogs that feasted on God's corpse begin "speaking a mishmash of Greek and Hebrew" and inspiring worship among Africans. (Meanwhile, in America, the masses, seeking a deity to fill the void, begin worshipping children.) Looking at humanity through a warped lens allows the various narrators unusual insight; while sometimes overwrought, these observations are often striking, as when an enlightened dog describes the strange new experience of emotion. This novel-in-stories is unsettling and strange, but still easily accessible; despite the ways in which his world has changed, Currie's altered humanity has one foot in ours. (July)
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Review
“ Currie’s strength rests in his ability to focus humanity’s conundrums on the smallest physical particles. The truth he presents is that the world has become absurd; he is merely delivering a steady-cam view.”
—Los Angeles Times

“ [A] cavalierly ambitious debut . . . with talking dogs, text message–happy teenagers, and end-of-day shenanigans. Like Kurt Vonnegut, he seems to understand that in the face of grim and grave concerns, humor is a more powerful salt than screed.”
—John Freeman, San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author
Ron Currie, Jr.’s prizewinning fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Sun, Other Voices, and Night Train. He has been shortlisted for the Fish International Short Story Award and Swink magazine’s Emerging Writer Award.

Customer Reviews

When God is irrelevant... what happens?
What happens when God dies?

The sun still rises and sets, because God had already set the planets in motion. But what happens to us?

This is the theme behind the novel, God is Dead.

It begins with God, disguised as a wounded Dinka woman from Sudan, being killed by the Janjaweed in the Darfur desert. The observation that feral dogs feeding on her body now speak ancient languages give rise to the conclusion that God, indeed, has died.

What happens next? Author Ron Currie looks at humanity from a variety of perspectives, and the text almost reads as if the succeeding chapters were given to a variety of authors to experiment with this theme. But they were all written by Currie, of course. He writes well, with intensity and clarity.

But God remains dead. No Gandalf resurrection here.

This novel is worthy of more than one reading. I've only read it the once, but I "see" that I missed subtle messages here. Knowing where Currie takes the story, I know I can get more out of it the second time around. It is also easy to select one or two chapters to revisit.

And remember, this is a novel, not a "God is not Great" expose of religion. But you will feel sorry for God, who lives, and dies, experiencing the suffering in Darfur.

Who is that sitting next to you?

But has anything really changed?
I don't think readers should over-examine this story collection/novel for its religious message, since the premise isn't theological -- it's just wildly imaginative. What if God manifested himself in Darfur in the body of a Dinka girl and died there? One answer is that the world, learning of God's death, spins out of control. But another is that God wasn't really doing anything to stop calamity in the first place, so what has changed? Our fate is in our own hands, just as it was before. You could make either case from these stories, if that's what you want to do, but in the meantime you could just enjoy these very well made fictions, from the title story, "God is Dead," in which Colin Powell visits the Sudan, to the last story, "Retreat," in which the outcome of a war between the armies of the Evolutionary Psychologists and the Postmodern Anthropologists is decided. The characters are quirky, but believable, trying to cope with situations that, only in the context of a world that has just learned of God's death, are wholly credible. This is a terrific debut and should find readers of all stripes.

Falls short ...
For a book that starts out with such a wonderful premise, this story falls flat on its face after the first chapter.

As one reviewer noted, we see that "the sun still rises and the sun still sets." But beyond that, all we get is a fairly demoralizing romp through a nihilistic Traumwelt. The author presents a number of story lines, any of which show promise at the outset. However, as the story progresses, some story lines are just dropped, others wind down blind alleys, and some are denouement without an appropriate climax.

Overall, a disappointing read.