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Overview
“A stunning novel by a great American writer.”—Washington Post
Jerusalem: home to seekers, heretics, hustlers, and madmen of many faiths. In this most fractious city, a plot unfolds to bomb the sacred Temple Mount.
Christopher Lucas, an expatriate American journalist, stumbles upon the plot while investigating religious fanatics. Entangled in the intrigue are a nightclub singer, an unstable Jewish guru, a strung-out Kabbalist seeking the messiah, and a soldier of fortune routinely found at the world’s violent clashes. A confrontation in Gaza, a chase through riot-filled streets, a cat-and-mouse game in an underground maze—as Lucas races against time, he uncovers the duplicity and depravity on all sides of Jerusalem’s sacred struggle.
An explosive bestseller, Damascus Gate lays bare the dangers at the fringes of faith.
“A transcendent thriller.”—Time
“Brims over with plots, subplots, and an impressive array of incisively drawn characters . . . The range of [Stone’s] knowledge is spectacular.”—The New Yorker
“Damascus Gate asks enormous questions about cosmic truth—and its effect on those who think they own it—with intensity, intellectual rigor and abiding morality.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Editorials
From the Publisher
"But while the religious quests of Stone's characters help drive his story, the novel is ultimately concerned less with metaphysics and cosmic order than with the earthly realm of politics and the human craving for certainty. The characters in Damascus Gate may be "God- struck," they may dream insistently of a better world, but like so many Stone characters, they end up captives of history and their own very human illusions." — The New York Times"Heavy as a marble tablet, it delivers revelations about character and culture in the way that only a dense, textured novel can.... Precise and passionate, Damascus Gate is a stunning achievement." — Philadelphia Inquirer
"Damascus Gate asks enormous questions about cosmic truth—and its effect on those who think they own it—with intensity, intellectual rigor and abiding morality." — San Francisco Chronicle
"The writing, often dense with metaphor and landscape, is powerful, and the result is a pulsing, profound novel...." — Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Pulsing...Jonathan Rosen
Stone has faced his novel with the literary equivalent of Jerusalem stone, the luminous chiseled rock that lends authenticity to almost every building in Jerusalem.— The New York Times Book Review
Philadelphia Inquirer
Stunning achievement.Daphne Merkin
The definitive novel about Israel....Brims over with plots, subplots, and an impressive array of incisively drawn characters.—The New Yorker
Publishers Weekly
From its sublime triumphs to its noble failures, Stone's first novel since Outerbridge Reach (1993) is a major work in every aspect, a sprawling, discordant prose symphony. In Jerusalem, which he depicts as a holy Bedlam, Stone finds the perfect setting for the spiritual agonies that have marked his most powerful writing. In that city, everyone suffers from the burden of faith, or lack of it, and everyone wants something, usually at any price. Expat American journalist Christopher Lucas wants a surer identityborn Christian and Jewish, he feels rooted to neither faithas well as love and, of course, a good story. But his desire has limits, drawn by conscience, and so he serves well as the reader's proxy, a normal man surrounded by seekers of the absolute. Around Lucas swirl addled saints, addicted sinners, con men, cruel members of Hamas and even crueler Israeli security forces. All the parties have their own agendas, most of which hinge on a conspiracy among extremist Israeli Jews and American Christians to blow up the Temple Mount and usher in Armageddon. Stone's presentation of this narrative backbone can be mechanical and sometimes seems extraneous to the novel's main theme of the wages of faith. More captivating is an ancillary plot involving a drug-blasted seeker's attempts to elevate a manic-depressive Jew as a world savior; one of his pawns, Sonia Barnes, an American Sufi who's also Lucas's love interest, proves as compelling as any Stone heroine. Most extraordinary, though, is the author's passionate etching of landscapes both physical and spiritual. The book opens slowly, with a diffuse if portentous ramble through the city, though the narrative intensifies through scenes of terror and moral gravityparticularly in a nightmare Gaza strip inflamed by riotuntil Jerusalem and its people coalesce to iridescent indelibility. Bold and bracing, ambitious and inspired, Damascus Gate is, even for its flaws, an astonishment. (May) (PW best book of 1998)Entertainment Weekly
Pulsing...Daphne Merkin
The definitive novel about Israel....Brims over with plots, subplots, and an impressive array of incisively drawn characters.— The New Yorker
Philadelphia Inquirer
Stunning achievement.Jonathan Rosen
[Stone] has faced his novel with the literary equivalent of Jerusalem stone, the luminous chiseled rock that lends authenticity to almost every building in Jerusalem.— The New York Times Book Review
People Magazine
A lucid, if at time hallucinatory, novel set in modern Jerusalem, where a skeptical journalist investigates the zealots whose clashing faiths inspire both violence and hope.Michiko Kakutani
Gripping...the endgame he plays is masterly.— The New York Times