by Ann Wroe (Author)
The facts about Pontius Pilate are very few. We don't know when he was born or when he died. We know nothing of his career before he became Govenor of Judea, and nothing of what happened to him after he was recalled by Tiberius. Some say he came from Rome, others from Spain or Germany. Everyone - from the evangelists to the writers of the medieval mystery plays - has his own Pilate, each symbolic of something, each a projection of his own ideas and anxieties. This extraordinary book is all about our Pilates, real, half-real and invented. Some are familiar, some surprising. They have depths and contrasts that are unexpected. They do remarkable things. Among these surprises, perhaps, are the glimpses we get of a man actually walking on a marble floor in Caesarea, feeling his shoes pinch, clicking his fingers for a slave, while the clouds of lasting infamy gather over his head.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 400
Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
Published: 18 Mar 1999
ISBN 10: 0224059424
ISBN 13: 9780224059428
Book Overview: A brilliant tour de force of a biography - about a man of whom we know nothing, and yet everything.
Prizes: Shortlisted for WH Smith Literary Prize 2000 and WH Smith Annual Literary Award 2000 and Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 1999.
Extraordinary and compelling. - Sunday Telegraph
Ann Wroe's knowledge of the past 2,000 years is encyclopaedic--She manages to keep Pilate living and breathing in the text, and occasionally kicking and screaming. - Independent on Sunday
From the Trade Paperback edition.