I Am God

“The narrator of Sartori’s hilarious, insightful novel, his first to be published in English, is none other than God, a proper monotheistic deity stirred in a very human way by one of his own creations.... On page after laugh-out-loud page, this articulate God—and author—cover just about every cynical and lofty concept concerning one’s own existence that humans ever pondered. This is an immensely satisfying feat of imagination.”

* Publishers Weekly, Starred Review *

“Who better to reflect on the state of the planet than its creator? I Am God is by turns funny, sad, outrageous, and tender—a cosmic romp.”

-- Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

“I am God is like a mirthful dream made real by the ingenuity of Sartori’s prose and Randall’s splendidly pointed and sly translation.”

-- Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen

“A playful, exciting, mockingly modern voice, translated, what’s more, by one of the few translators who can really make the Italian vernacular sing truly and fluently in English.”

-- Tim Parks, author of Italian Ways and Italian Neighbors

“In this riotous philosophical romp, Sartori has invented an omniscient narrator like no other and an identity crisis with truly cosmic implications. Poignant, hilarious, and serious by turns, this is a jeu d’esprit with both heart and mind.”

-- Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation

“What a funny, smart book that tweaks a kind of philosophical view of ‘God’s’ work against the quandary of said God falling in love with an odd young woman scientist, which throws him off his game. You’ve got to love both his problem and his surprise at his compulsion to drift back into it regularly while he discourses on the waywardness of humans in general. Giacomo Sattori is a wizard here with the way his light touch in fact is anything but, providing readers with a most entertaining read full of necessary, shall we say, unexamined hubris on the part of all characters within our author’s focus. What a refreshing delight.”

-- Sheryl Cotleur, Copperfield’s Books (Sebastopol, CA)

“I Am God is an almost outrageously charming book…. Giacomo Sartori takes a simple, playful premise and sets the universe crazily spinning. The Italian writer has conjured up a delicious, comical stream of omniconsciousness: a pensive diary by the original omniscient narrator, God. Sartori’s God, a being of authentic complexity and paradoxical humanity, of both otherworldly dignity and satirical absurdity, is an irresistible character…. His withering pronouncements resemble the dry, intelligent wit of a celestial Oscar Wilde more than the crash of vengeful thunderbolts from on high. And his aim is true…. Sartori’s humor, godlike, infus[es] every part of the book from the premise to the plot to the venal, amiably clueless characters to the language of the diary narrated in the celestial being’s intelligent, deadpan voice.… The elegant, easy-going translation by Frederika Randall is convincing and conversational, reveling in the diary’s asides, footnotes, and parentheses in which God is constantly setting the record, and the reader, straight…. Sartori has bestowed on us a narrative that is both comforting and disconcerting. His main character is preposterous and genuine, a supremely confident supreme being discovering the immensity of human insignificance, the wonders of confusion and vulnerability, the limitless frustrations of language and love and, of course, sex…. He’s large, he contains multitudes, and he is the ultimate unreliable narrator.”

—Cathleen Schine, New York Review of Books

-- Cathleen Schine * New York Review of Books *

“This novel is an utterly serious and wildly comic test of the strange idea we take for granted in reading prose fiction—the pretense of the omniscient narrator.... By speaking in the voice of God, Sartori has simplified the premise and complicated the result of writing as such…. This God [is] the brilliant, hilarious, and utterly believable creation of Sartori.”

—James Livingston, The New Republic

-- James Livingston * The New Republic *

“Delightful, strikingly current, infectiously readable.... The irrational pull of erotic love has never had a funnier incarnation than the one in I Am God…. Sartori pulls out all the stops in a long tradition of first-person confessions by the Creator, beginning with the Ten Commandments… Transcending mere blasphemy, Sartori refuses to take the Lord’s name in vain. Every little chapter of I Am God forces the reader to decide whether laughter or outrage is the proper response. There’s a grand tradition of Italian artists (Dante, Michelangelo, Verdi) who shock us with their new and unsettling images of God. In his modest and profound way, Sartori belongs in this terrific company.”

—Michael Alec Rose, BookPage

-- Michael Alec Rose * BookPage *

“I Am God is compulsively readable, with passages so crisp and funny that readers will want to read them aloud. Sartori, an Italian scientist, has written a book that, beyond its philosophical wit, draws attention to hypocrisy in all forms.”

—Cindy Pauldine, the river’s end bookstore (Oswego, NY)

-- Cindy Pauldine, River’s End Bookstore, Oswego, NY

“God, famously upstaged by Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, gives a livelier performance in Giacomo Sartori’s I Am God (Restless, Feb.), his first novel to be translated from Italian into English.”

—Matt Seidel,Publishers Weekly Writers to Watch: Spring 2019

-- Matt Seidel * Publishers Weekly *

“A highly original novel, showing that there is, thankfully, more to Italian fiction than Elena Ferrante.”

—Howard Davies, Financial Times, Best Books of 2019: Critics’ Picks

-- Howard Davies * Financial Tim