WHAT I THINK IT’S ABOUT
In the first two decades of the 21st century, genetic research surged ahead, unlocking the genomes of countless living creatures including man himself, and of course, the sparrow. Drunk with the power of limitless knowledge, and their newly-acquired ability to play “God”, scientists began creating all kinds of weird and monstrous genetic concoctions confident their Island of Doctor Moreau-like creations would not see life, if you could call it that, outside the lab.
That was until one day, impatient to see the world forbidden to him, Bernie the Sun Blocking Sparow, so named because of his gargantuan size (and eventual role as an aerial UV filter at populous beaches), fled his cage. Desperate to see as much of the world as he could before he was inevitably recaptured, he raced with every mighty flap of his massive wings, soaring towards the sun like a moth toward a flame. Alas, he might have had brawn but his brain was not nearly so impressive, and misjudging the distance, he accidentally raced into the sun, a giant genetic Icarus so large he sucked up all the energy, turning the sun dark billions of years before its time.
And thus by their own hand, or genetically-created bloody big wing, did mankind and the earth itself cease to exist, brought low by its own intellectual hubris and a giant sparrow of very little brain.
WHAT IT’S ACTUALLY ABOUT
“After the first exquisite songs were intercepted by radio telescope, UN diplomats debated long and hard whether and why human resources should be expended in an attempt to reach the world that would become known as Rakhat. In the Rome offices of the Society of of Jesus, the questions were not whether or why but how soon the mission could be attempted and whom to send. The Jesuit scientists went to Rakhat to learn, not to proselytise. They went so that they might come to know and love God’s other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the farthest frontiers of human exploration. They went for the greater glory of God. They meant no harm.”
Taking you on an extraordinary journey to a distant planet and to the very centre of the human soul, Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow is an astonishing literary debut – a powerful, haunting and exciting novel about the nature of faith and what it mean to be “human”.
(Source: back cover of 1997 Black Swan paperback edition of The Sparrow)