A tale told 'so humanely, so movingly and with such authorial depth and deftness that the reader would have to be a saint not to read it through in one enormous sitting.' - The Morning Star
'Virgin and Child cleverly merge crime with Catholicism and piety with a dangerous love.' Mary Flanagan
A genre-busting, gender-bending Vatican thriller. What happens when everything you know is thrown into doubt?
And you’re the Pope?
The recently elected Irish Pope Patrick has plans for his future Church. Then he is attacked in St Peter’s Square. Cardinals turn against him. Shocking revelations threaten his traditional status and his faith.
In this novel where nothing is as it seems, Catholicism and modern morality are held in tension. Pope Patrick has to face challenges and make choices he could never have imagined.
'Virgin and Child cleverly merge crime with Catholicism and piety with a dangerous love. Pope Patrick, the Irish Pope, is famed for his humanity but unaware of the subversive forces plotting his destruction. The novel is wonderfully original and absorbing, from the halls of the Vatican to its explosive conclusion.' Mary Flanagan
Sara Maitland writes: 'This is a strange and strangely touching novel – and it is also written with great elegance and authority. It tackles “head-on” some of the most challenging issues for the Roman Catholic Church around gender and sexuality and at the same time has some of the loveliest, most persuasive, writing about personal prayer that I have ever encountered in fiction.'
'Hamand has an acutely tuned ear for the innermost needs and yearnings of the human heart in the face of societal and institutional incomprehension, and Virgin and Child hovers exquisitely in terms of plot and style between the writings of Antony Burgess and Michael Arditti'. - Paul Simon, The Morning Star
Genre: Mystery
'Virgin and Child cleverly merge crime with Catholicism and piety with a dangerous love.' Mary Flanagan
A genre-busting, gender-bending Vatican thriller. What happens when everything you know is thrown into doubt?
And you’re the Pope?
The recently elected Irish Pope Patrick has plans for his future Church. Then he is attacked in St Peter’s Square. Cardinals turn against him. Shocking revelations threaten his traditional status and his faith.
In this novel where nothing is as it seems, Catholicism and modern morality are held in tension. Pope Patrick has to face challenges and make choices he could never have imagined.
'Virgin and Child cleverly merge crime with Catholicism and piety with a dangerous love. Pope Patrick, the Irish Pope, is famed for his humanity but unaware of the subversive forces plotting his destruction. The novel is wonderfully original and absorbing, from the halls of the Vatican to its explosive conclusion.' Mary Flanagan
Sara Maitland writes: 'This is a strange and strangely touching novel – and it is also written with great elegance and authority. It tackles “head-on” some of the most challenging issues for the Roman Catholic Church around gender and sexuality and at the same time has some of the loveliest, most persuasive, writing about personal prayer that I have ever encountered in fiction.'
'Hamand has an acutely tuned ear for the innermost needs and yearnings of the human heart in the face of societal and institutional incomprehension, and Virgin and Child hovers exquisitely in terms of plot and style between the writings of Antony Burgess and Michael Arditti'. - Paul Simon, The Morning Star
Genre: Mystery
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