Wise Blood

Wise Blood, Flannery O´Connor´s astonishiong and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-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 fifteen-year-old daughter, Lily Sabath. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel Motes 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 maneuvres are manifestations of Hazel´s existential struggles. This tale of redeption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.