“The position of a reader in a book is very like that occupied by angels in the world, when angels had any credibility. Yours is like theirs, a hovering, gravely attentive presence, observing everything and from whom nothing is concealed. Like them you are in a fabled world invisible.”
Imagine an island called Grandinsula in the Mediterranean sometime in the 15th century. The island is a theocracy where the uncompromising rule of the Catholic Church holds sway. A humble Cardinal Prince, Severo, watches over the citizens with a wise and benevolent eye. Jews and Saracens are tolerated in their enclaves and are allowed to practise their religion but must conform to strict rules. Into this peaceful, ordered, unchanging society come two strangers. They could not be more different. Their coming sends shock waves through the governing hierarchy and threatens the very foundations of the country.
Villagers collecting snow and ice from a high mountain capture a strange, savage creature. They are shocked to discover under the dirt and long matted hair a child, a girl who was raised by wolves.
On a seashore two fishermen spot a strange object out at sea and launch their boat. The object is a young man swimming slowly towards the island and very near the end of his strength.
A central question forms the core of the book: Is a child born with the knowledge of God embedded in its soul just as DNA is embedded in its cells, or is knowledge of God acquired like all other knowledge, from scholars and culture? The answer to the question could condemn the swimmer to death or save him.
The swimmer is Palinor, a man of high rank from a country called Aclar. Unlike the Grandinsula, Aclar is a liberal society where everyman it's free to think as he wishes and belief in God is a private matter. Palinor is an atheist, for him there is no God. Having arrived in a country ruled by the church and at the time of the inquisition, he is in grave danger. The authorities on the island are willing to accept Jews and Saracens (Muslims) because given time their false ideas may be converted to true belief. Unbelieving gentiles who are simply ignorant are also accepted, as their ignorance can be dispelled by good teaching, but atheists who absolutely deny the existence of God are children of Satan. They must be burned.
But suppose children are not born with the knowledge of God. Then Palinor did not have that knowledge buried within him at birth; Satan has not entered his soul and he can return home.
The wolf child provides a unique opportunity to answer this crucial question. Does she possess the knowledge of God within her? If she can be civilised and taught to speak without there being any mention of God, and if despite this, she has a sense of the divine then that would prove knowledge of God was innate.
Severo consults with his friend Beneditx a renowned theologian and sets him the task of proving the existence of God to Palinor. If Palinor can be convinced, then he will be safe. If he cannot then only the wolf child’s ignorance of God can save him.
This is a novel of ideas, about belief and unbelief, about certainty and doubt. But it is not dull and dry, far from it. Jill Paton Walsh writes a good story that carries you along yet also makes you pause and think. She draws the reader down from the lofty angel-view of a dispassionate observer on to the page and into the lives of her characters. You are invested in the life of Josifa, the young novitiate in a convent who is given charge of the wolf-girl, struggling with her day after day to shed the wolf and bring out the child. You share the intellectual dilemmas of Beneditx as he argues the existence of God with Palinor, only to find the firm ground of his certainties giving way beneath him. You grieve for Severo, caught between his high regard for Palinor and the unyielding rule of the inquisition.
Jill Paton Walsh says this is the book she was born to write. On a trip to the island of Mallorca at the time when the whole Islamic world was being encouraged to murder Salman Rushdie the story came to her and she wrote it very quickly.
If your mind enjoys wrestling with the age-old questions that have perplexed the human race for centuries, this is a book to make you wrestle further. Perhaps a book to make you think new thoughts.
