Available to purchase – on Amazon.com – on Amazon.co.uk
The Gospel According to Tomàs – a novel by Oliver Peers
A journey of faith, doubt and self-discovery in the heart of Spain…
Tomàs is in trouble. He’s in seminary—training to be a priest. This may have been a mistake.
Mid-life, after years of indulgence and questionable choices, Tomàs sought clarity, a path to purity, to something true. But faith isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. His thoughts bristle—restless, relentless, even sexual. The confessional was meant to fix this. Instead, it unravels everything.
In Valladolid, Spain, under the weight of Church doctrine and his own tangled history, Tomàs wrestles with a brutal realization: if love is truth and truth is love—then the Church is wrong.
A novel of faith and failure, desire and self-deception, The Gospel According to Tomàs is an unflinching study of belief on the edge of collapse. With wry intelligence and piercing introspection, Oliver Peers delivers a vivid, fearless portrait of a man running out of places to hide.
For readers drawn to literary fiction, theological reckoning, and the uneasy intersection of faith, memory, and desire—reminiscent of the existential and philosophical fiction of Graham Greene, Rachel Cusk, and Julian Barnes.
Stylistically, Oliver Peers may be located within the traditions of Martin Amis and James Joyce.
A gripping, intelligent novel that lingers in the mind long after the final page.
Available to purchase – on Amazon.com – on Amazon.co.uk
The people are astonished by Jesus, in whom they see the mighty power of God. Straight away, though, Jesus turns to his disciples to tell them of the truth of his Messianic mission. In veiled terms, Jesus announces his passion and death: the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men. There is extreme contrast between the people’s, and the disciples’, understanding of how the Messiah shall be, and the reality of Christ’s true mission on Earth, to suffer, to be crucified, and so to ransom mankind, redeeming us from death and sin. There is secret, hidden truth, which only gradually becomes manifest through the course of the Gospels [ … ]
The world into which Jesus was born was not just one of imperial power—it was a world of cruelty, excess, and moral depravity beyond modern comprehension. The Caesars were not merely rulers; they were demigods in their own eyes, demanding worship, reveling in debauchery, and enforcing their will through brutality. Rome was a world where the strong crushed the weak, where spectacles of torture and death entertained the masses, and where mercy was seen as weakness [ … ]
The time is come. Jesus has been baptised by John. He has spent time alone in the wilderness, symbolic of the Exodus wanderings, and is come to Galilee to begin his ministry. His first act is to call the first of the apostles to their new vocation. In Mark’s Gospel, as in Matthew’s, this follows upon the arrest of John the Baptist. This clearly differs from the account of John’s Gospel, while the Gospel of Luke could be seen as presenting a more detailed and less stylised account of the meeting of Christ with the fishermen [ … ]
