ABSTRACT
Published in 2000, City of God is one of E.L. Doctorow’s most ambitious, complex and enigmatic novels. It is a highly metafictional book that may be best described as a collection of skillfully interwoven plots and voices that create a kaleidoscopic universe of alternative ontological levels. The reception of the novel was rather polarized. Writing for The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called City of God a “novel of ideas that may be packed with ideas but that fails as a satisfying work of fiction” (n.p.). In Newsweek, Peter Plagens wrote, however, that it all hangs together “brilliantly” (n.p.). Walter Kirn, writing for New York, claimed that “[i]t’s an easy book to admire but a hard one to love, perhaps” (n.p.). Yet, commentary on City of God regrettably remains rather scarce compared to other of Doctorow’s novels, probably due to its philosophical complexity, divided focus and unclassifiable nature.
