Wise Blood

Flannery OConnors astonishing and haunting first novel is a classic of twentiethcentury literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twentytwoyearold caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a blind street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteenyearold daughter. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own nonfaith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel founds The Church of God Without Christ but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with wise blood, who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Hazels existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.