About The Christos Mosaic
Hardcover: 531 pages
Publisher: Blank Slate Press (October 27, 2015)
A suspicious death in Istanbul leaves one ancient scroll and clues to finding another in the hands of Drew Korchula, a thirty-two-year-old American ex-pat, a Turkish dwarf named Kadir, and Zafer, a Special Forces washout. Drew is desperate to turn everything over to the academic community, and in the process redeem himself in the eyes of his estranged wife, but Kadir and Zafer are only interested in what they can get for the scrolls on the black market. None of them anticipated a coven of shadowy Church operatives determined to prevent the revelations embodied in the priceless manuscripts from ever going public.
An action-packed, intellectual thriller unraveling a theological cold case more than two thousand years old, The Christos Mosaic is a monumental work of biblical research wrapped in a story of love, faith, human frailty, friendship, and forgiveness. The novel takes the reader through the backstreets of Istanbul, Antakya (ancient Antioch), and Cairo, to clandestine negotiations with wealthy antiquities smugglers and ruthless soldiers of fortune, to dusty Egyptian monasteries, on a nautical skirmish off the coast of Alexandria, and finally to the ruins of Constantine’s palace buried beneath the streets of present-day Istanbul.
“The Christos Mosaic is the most fun I’ve had with an encyclopedic novel since Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum—and a lot more headlong, colorful, and seat-of-the-pants exciting. It careens through Istanbul, Cairo, and Alexandria in pursuit of answers to a historical mystery that turns on the unraveling of a theological conspiracy that is deeply meaningful for us today.”—Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren
“The Christos Mosaic” is part Orhan Pamuk, part Elaine Pagels, and part Dan Brown. But it is mostly Vincent Czyz, an irrepressible fiction writer who has the good sense to realize that scholarship is the friend of great stories—and the talent to put that friendship to good use. I must confess that I turned to the novel for fun, and it is fun from first page to last. What surprised me was how very much I learned about the past. A wonderful novel. —James Goodman, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history
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“I can’t come up with enough superlatives to express how thoroughly—completely—hugely—immensely—I enjoyed reading this novel. It’s everything I could have wished for and much more. It must be read by as many people worldwide as possible. I have a gut feeling that it could effect a sea-change in the common understanding of Christianity. It’s a masterful synthesis of solid scholarship and adventure. I’m glad to be one of its first appreciative readers.”—Paul Palmer, former assistant editor, American Atheist magazine
“Vincent Czyz’s The Christos Mosaic accomplishes the rare trick of having it both ways, delivering a fast-paced, action-packed storyline that challenges the mind rather than epileptically dazzling it with portentous piffle. This novel turns out to be the rare adventure story that rewards the reader’s attention by being as diverting as it is rigorously encyclopedic.” Matt Hanson, The Arts Fuse
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About Vincent Czyz
Vincent Czyz is the author of The Christos Mosaic, a novel, and Adrift in a Vanishing City, a collection of short fiction. He received two fellowships from the NJ Council on the Arts and the W. Faulkner-W. Wisdom Prize for Short Fiction. The 2011 Truman Capote Fellow at Rutgers University, his stories and essays have appeared in New England Review, Shenandoah, AGNI, The Massachusetts Review, Tin House (online), Boston Review, Quiddity, The Tampa Review, The Georgetown Review, and Skidrow Penthouse, among other publications. He spent a total of nearly a decade in Istanbul, Turkey before settling in Jersey City. His work often deals with the existential themes found in art, myth and religion, dreams, and primal ways of perceiving the world.
Vincent Czyz’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:
Monday, February 8th: It’s A Mad Mad World
Thursday, February 11th: Bibliotica
Wednesday, February 17th: Hoser’s Blog
Monday, March 7th: Life is Story
Thursday, March 24th: Patricia’s Wisdom