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Wise Blood

By: Flannery O’Connor
Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
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Publisher's Summary

Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel is a classic of 20th-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a 22-year-old 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 15-year-old daughter.

In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, 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 Hazel’s existential struggles.

This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.
©1990 The Estate of Mary Flannery O’Connor (P)2010 Blackstone Audio
Classics Literary Fiction United States
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Critic Reviews

“No other major American writer of our century has constructed a fictional world so energetically and forthrightly charged by religious investigation.” ( The New Yorker)
“There is in Flannery O’Connor a fierceness of literary gesture, an angriness of observation, a facility for catching, as an animal eye in the wilderness, cunningly and at one sharp glance, the shape and detail and animal intention of enemy and foe.” ( The New York Times Book Review)

What listeners say about Wise Blood

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Profile Image for Robert Hiini

Outstanding reading

I liked this book very much. It will need some mulling over. The read is magnificent. Worth it to hear the narrator utter Maud's lines alone.

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Excellent in every way

A great introduction to her work, brilliantly performed in an ideal medium for her stories.

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  • jdk
  • 29-05-2018

Best Performance Yet

I love O'Connor's dark, surreal humour, but Bronson Pincot steals the show here with an exemplary performance for each of her twisted, broken characters.

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  • Dan
  • 25-04-2023

Damn

Excellent characterisation! Love the way Flannery writes. If you like the strange characters then this one is for you

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