'The Fifth Gospel' is set entirely inside the Vatican and told from the perspective of a Catholic priest. I'm not Catholic myself, yet authenticity and factual accuracy are very important to me, so the novel required an enormous amount of research.

Ian Caldwell

The Vatican has to strike a difficult balance between running a country and running a religious institution.

Ian Caldwell

I write about modern people who share a deep sense of connection to the mysteries of the past. I find that I understand myself and my world better when I'm able to peer into history as a mirror.

Ian Caldwell

The Bible never tells us what Jesus looked like, and in the earliest surviving paintings of him, he is sometimes depicted as short-haired, sometimes as beardless, with no authoritative version winning out over the others. Yet around 400 A.D., all of the other competing images were replaced by the long-haired, bearded Jesus we know today.

Ian Caldwell

'The Fifth Gospel' is set entirely inside the Vatican and told from the perspective of a Catholic priest. I'm not Catholic myself, yet authenticity and factual accuracy are very important to me, so the novel required an enormous amount of research.

Ian Caldwell