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At first glance, Theophilos appears to be a work of historical fiction--yet, in a much more profound sense, it is an examination of conscience for the present age: an examen of original sin and salvo of original grace.

The protagonist is Theophilos, the correspondent whom Luke mentions at the beginning of Luke's Gospel and Acts. The Greek-born son of a man freed from slavery, Theophilos seems free of both the slavery his father endured and the delusions imposed by the world and the excesses of passion.

A practicing physician on the Isle of Crete, Theophilos is every bit the modern rationalist--but with the soul of a virtuous pagan. In fact, Theophilos is an archetype of the best that the world and human effort, intellect, and technos have to offer. A fitting Virgil to lead us through the ancient world in the decades immediately following the Death and Resurrection of Iesous the Christos, he guides us pilgrim readers through the follies and glories of humankind in a journey that stretches beyond a particular age. The suspense of the plot is evoked in our--and Theophilos'--haunting doubt as to whether ours is the path to Inferno or Purgatorio.

Rescuing Loukas (Luke) from a plague that has wasted Loukas' mother (Theophilos' sister), father, and city (Thessalonika), Theophilos takes the boy to his home on Crete, raising the child as his own and training him in medicine, a labor and science that Theophilos again and again heroically and vainly wields against the forces of chaos.

For, outside Theophilos' well-stocked library and even the walls of his home town lurks man's capacity for evil. Repeatedly, the good physician struggles to snatch a few more years of life for one of his patients, only to witness humanity's thirst for death. This book is a meditation on the physician who cannot heal himself and the worldly agonies that tear open his heart.

Like Aeneas carrying his father from burning Troy, Theophilos is Antique pagan man--and the best of contemporary man--struggling to save from the burning ruins of human civilization something that marks our dignity and purpose in the cosmos. Theophilos dialogues with the young Loukas upon the latter's interpretation of the Aeneid, both physicians assenting to the vanity of human effort, even that of the greatest empire in history:

"the dream of noble Rome, the forgiving and just Rome, is an illusion ... the sword is always thrust into those whom she conquers." (47)

But Loukas adds an important coda that foreshadows his--and the pagan world's--embracing an unforeseen hope: the resurrected Christos, who carries us out of the flames:

"There is a scene I love most of all ... when Troy is burning and Aeneas ... escapes carrying his aged father on his back--and with his little son clinging to his hand." (47-48)

I will not tell you here whether Theophilos is saved from the burning ruins of the City of Man ... for that story is our own story--the story of our age, which is yet in the telling. In the meantime, O'Brien invites our age to dare believe that we are not "shameless apes" deserving to die in our burning cities.

Read Theophilos to discover why.Get more detail about Theophilos.