15 Jan / I Am God by Giacomo Sartori, translated by Frederika Randall [in Booklist]
“I myself am astonished at what’s happening to me,” God – yes, that God – confesses. “I’m the same … I remain infallible, omniscient, omnipotent, omniwhatever. And yet, and yet …” Somehow, God’s fallen in love with “this damn Daphne”; she’s “a tall girl with purple pigtails who at every opportunity is shoving her arms up a cow’s ass,” albeit with purpose, as she’s a geneticist with a side gig in artificial bovine insemination.
She’s also “an incorrigible misbeliever who’s in favor of gay marriage and abortion on demand … and all she cares about is her own sexual satisfaction.” As a “militant atheist,” she just might have a virtual target on the Vatican. Plagued by “foolishness,” God’s taken to journaling, making his ruinous obsession an open book – in fact, this open book.
Italian novelist, poet, dramatist, and scientist Giacomo Sartori ruthlessly confronts the Catholic Church, hypermasculinity, environmental manipulation, capitalism, feel-good entitlement, and more, all in the name of God (whose perfection proves anything but). PEN/Heim Translation Fund-awarded Frederika Randall ensures that Sartori’s English-language debut conveys the full impact of Sartori’s scathing humor.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, January 1, 2019
Readers: Adult
Published: 2019 (United States)