God’s Madman at the End of the World (El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo) · Javier Cercas · Spain (2025)
Javier Cercas is an atheist and a long-time critic of the Church. Still, he joins Pope Francis on a trip to Mongolia, with rare access to the Vatican’s inner circle and one private question that drives the whole book: when his mother dies, will she meet her husband again.
What follows is a long, readable inquiry that moves between travel, reporting, and family memory, with one central idea in the background from start to finish: what it would mean for resurrection to be real.
Babelia placed it at number one in its list of the 50 best books of 2025. It also won the Prix du Livre Européen 2025, the Jacques Delors European Book Prize. (Original language: Spanish.)