I Am God (novel)

Last updated
I Am God
I Am God - A Novel.jpg
First edition
AuthorGiacomo Sartori
Original titleSono Dio [1]
TranslatorFrederika Randall [2]
CountryItaly
LanguageItalian
Genre Satire, comedy, epistolary [3]
Publication date
1 May 2016 [4]
Published in English
5 February 2019 [5]
ISBN 9781632062147

I Am God, originally published as Sono Dio, is an Italian novel by Giacomo Sartori about the Abrahamic God falling in love with a mortal woman. First published in 2016 and translated into English by Frederika Randall in 2019, [2] it was a critical and commercial success.

Contents

Plot

I Am God opens with God beginning to keep a journal about his view on modern society, and in particular his infatuation with Daphne, a young geneticist. Daphne, an atheist post-punk and anti-Catholic activist, attracts God's attention although he fails to understand why. [3] Much of the book is epistolary, with God as a first-person narrator through his journal, discussing his thoughts on a humanity he finds unsatisfying; language is recent to him, as the God of the novel has mostly disclaimed and damned humanity on the basis of thinking human language and thought to be evil. [6] The plot also features a love triangle between Daphne, God, and her mortal boyfriend Giovanni, an alcoholic and sexually uninhibited paleontologist. [7]

The God of I Am God has been characterized as neurotic, garrulous, and overly verbose. [8] He also holds conservative views on matters of gender and sexuality, being called "half heteronormative deity, half embarrassing uncle" by Martin Riker of The New York Times . [3]

Reception

I Am God received mostly positive reviews. Michael Alec Rose of BookPage described the novel as "delightful, strikingly current, [and] infectiously readable" and compared Sartori to great historical Italian religious artists such as Michelangelo and Dante Alighieri, saying "in his modest and profound way, Sartori belongs in this terrific company". [1] R. P. Finch of The Philadelphia Inquirer called it "a pleasure to read", but criticized the plot for being overly complex, [6] while Publishers Weekly referred to it as "an immensely satisfying feat of imagination". [7] James Livingston of The New Republic wrote a particularly in-depth review, interpreting I Am God as a meditation on the human focus on death and mortality, concepts alien to an immortal deity. [8]

Kirkus Reviews and The New York Times both gave more mixed reviews. Kirkus criticized the book for lacking sharpness and for what it interpreted as homophobic content, [5] while The New York Times, while overall positive, found the characters to be overly simplistic and the humour perhaps weakened by translation. [3]

Italian reviewers were also positive about Sono Dio, the original Italian novel. Gabriele Sabatini of Flaneri praised the novel for its sense of spirit and vigour, [9] while Stefano Zangrando of L'Indice dei libri del mese endorsed the humour and prose. [10]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elagabalus</span> Roman emperor from 218 to 222

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known by his nicknames Elagabalus and Heliogabalus, was Roman emperor from 218 to 222, while he was still a teenager. His short reign was notorious for sex scandals and religious controversy. A close relative to the Severan dynasty, he came from a prominent Arab family in Emesa (Homs), Syria, where since his early youth he served as head priest of the sun god Elagabal. After the death of his cousin, the emperor Caracalla, Elagabalus was raised to the principate at 14 years of age in an army revolt instigated by his grandmother Julia Maesa against Caracalla's short-lived successor, Macrinus. He only posthumously became known by the Latinised name of his god.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriele Amorth</span> Italian Roman Catholic priest and exorcist

Gabriele Amorth was an Italian Catholic priest of the Paulines and an exorcist for the Diocese of Rome. Amorth, along with five other priests, founded the International Association of Exorcists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriele Salvatores</span> Italian film director and screenwriter

Gabriele Salvatores is an Italian Academy Award-winning film director and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Percival Everett</span> American writer (born 1956)

Percival Everett is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan Gómez-Jurado</span> Spanish journalist and author (born 1977)

Juan Gómez-Jurado is a Spanish journalist and author. He is a columnist in "La Voz de Galicia" and "ABC", distributed in Spain, and he participates in multiple radio and TV programs. His books have been translated into 42 languages and he is one of the most successful living Spanish authors, along with Javier Sierra and Carlos Ruiz Zafón. His writing has been described by critics as "energetic and cinematographic".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maggie O'Farrell</span> Irish-British novelist, born 1972

Maggie O'Farrell, RSL, is a novelist from Northern Ireland. Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. She appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future. Her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her novel Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.

<i>A Good House</i> 1999 novel by Bonnie Burnard

A Good House is the first novel by Canadian writer Bonnie Burnard, published by Picador in 1999 and later by Henry Holt and Company in United States of America. It was the winner of that year's Scotiabank Giller Prize. The novel narrates the story of a family in three generations, five houses starting from 1949 until 1997.

<i>Nation</i> (novel) 2008 novel by Terry Pratchett

Nation is a novel by Terry Pratchett, published in the UK on 11 September 2008 and in the US on 6 October 2009. It was the first non-Discworld Pratchett novel since Johnny and the Bomb (1996). Nation is a low fantasy set in an alternative history of our world in the 1860s. The book received recognition as a Michael L. Printz Honor Book for 2009.

<i>The Devils Advocate</i> (West novel) 1959 novel by Morris L. West

The Devil's Advocate is a 1959 novel by Australian author Morris West. It forms part of West's "Vatican" sequence of novels, along with The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963), The Clowns of God (1981), and Lazarus (1990).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roland Merullo</span> American author (born 1953)

Roland Merullo is an American author who writes novels, essays and memoir. His best-known works are the novels Breakfast with Buddha, In Revere, In Those Days, A Little Love Story, Revere Beach Boulevard and the memoir Revere Beach Elegy. His books have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, German, Chinese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovenian, Czech and Italian.

L'Indice dei libri del mese (L'Indice) is an Italian monthly of cultural information. Founded in 1984, it is one of the longest-running and authoritative in the field. Taking inspiration from internationally renowned book reviews such as The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books, L'Indice offers its readers reviews of books and the arts, and essays on current events and cultural topics starting from the most significant literary and intellectual production in Italian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marica Bodrožić</span> German writer

Marica Bodrožić is a German writer of Croatian descent. She was born in Svib in Cista Provo, Croatia in the former Yugoslavia. She moved to Germany as a child and currently lives in Berlin.

The Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales is a quarterly French academic journal of social science established in 1975 by Pierre Bourdieu at the Maison des sciences de l'homme (MSH). It is published by Éditions du Seuil and produced in collaboration with the Centre de sociologie européenne, as well as the Collège de France, the Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme, and the Centre national du livre.

The Tristan Strong series is a mythology book trilogy written by Kwame Mbalia. The series currently consists of three books. The first book, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, was published on October 15, 2019, and the second installment, Tristan Strong Destroys the World, was released a year later on October 6, 2020. Book three, the last in the trilogy, Tristan Strong Keeps Punching, was announced on February 8, 2021, and released on October 5, 2021. All three books are about African-American folktales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederika Randall</span> American-Italian translator and journalist (1948–2020)

Frederika Randall was an American-Italian translator and journalist. Born in western Pennsylvania, she expatriated to Italy in 1985 at the age of 37. As a journalist, she wrote in both English and Italian for publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Internazionale; from 2000 until her death, she was the Rome correspondent to The Nation. A prolific translator, her works included Confessions of an Italian, considered one of the most important Italian novels of the 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giacomo Sartori</span> Italian writer

Giacomo Sartori is an Italian author and agronomist. His day job as a soil scientist has attracted attention for its atypicality and influence on his work. Sartori, who began writing in his thirties, has since published seven novels and four collections of short stories. He is also an editor and columnist of the online literary magazine Nazione Indiana. I Am God, his first novel to be published in English, was translated in 2019 by Frederika Randall and received positive reviews.

<i>We Were Witches</i> 2017 novel by Ariel Gore

We Were Witches is a 2017 novel by Ariel Gore. It is a first-person narrative of a fictionalized version of the author, of her life as a teen mom and budding feminist, from the birth of her daughter when she was 18 years old, to her graduation from Mills College.

<i>A Song for Arbonne</i> 1992 novel by Guy Gavriel Kay

A Song for Arbonne is a novel by Canadian writer Guy Gavriel Kay published in 1992. It is set in a fantasy world with two moons and is loosely based on 12th-century Provence and the Albigensian Crusade.

Monica J. Romano is an Italian activist, writer and politician. She was the first transgender municipal councilor in Milan.

<i>Fumettologica</i> Pop culture website

Fumettologica is a news website covering comic book–related news and discussion, considered the most important Italian information source on the topic.

References

  1. 1 2 Rose, Michael Alec (11 February 2019). "Book Review - I Am God by Giacomo Sartori". BookPage. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  2. 1 2 Stavans, Ilan (10 July 2020). "A Tribute to Frederika Randall, "Translator of the Unsaid"". Restless Books. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Riker, Martin (8 February 2019). "In This Novel, God Is Annoyed and in Love". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  4. "Sono Dio: Sartori, Giacomo". Amazon. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  5. 1 2 "I AM GOD". Kirkus Reviews. 13 November 2018. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  6. 1 2 Finch, R. P. (15 February 2019). "'I Am God' by Giacomo Sartori: A cranky, vulnerable deity not above a little slapstick". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  7. 1 2 "Fiction Book Review: I Am God". Publishers Weekly. 3 December 2018. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  8. 1 2 Livingston, James (2 May 2019). "Writing for the End Times". The New Republic. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  9. Sabatini, Gabriele (10 October 2016). "Sono Dio - Giacomo Sartori - Recensione". Flaneri (in Italian). Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  10. Zangrando, Stefano (1 October 2016). "Giacomo Sartori - Sono Dio". L'Indice dei libri del mese (in Italian). Retrieved 2 February 2021.