Father Thomas Newman is a priest in trouble. An affair with a diplomat's wife and her suicide in his apartment are the least of his worries. The greater problem is a piece of paper that is thousands of years old; the Gospel of Judas. Apparently, what Judas Iscariot has to say isn't at all pretty.

Simon Mawer flips the Catholic Church and Christianity upside down with The Gospel of Judas and he does it with immaculate story telling and stunning visuals. In the crowded streets of Rome and the ancient passageways of Jerusalem, Mawer weaves a fascinating tale of forbidden love and resurrection. The controversial scroll is only part of the story. The novel is actually an elaborate character study of Father Newman, the troubled priest who questions his faith, his passion for a married woman, and who deciphers the startling eyewitness account that can undo centuries of thinking and doctrine. To better explain his protagonist, Mawer shuttles back and forth between the present, the distant past and World War II, in Italy, where the story focuses on Newman's mother and how he came to be.

The Gospel of Judas is controversial on so many levels; the fallen priest, the context of the gospel, the allusion of historical theory as a stronger case than the theological perspective, and the World War II atrocity from the German perspective. However, you can't deny it's still a good read.