| The Colour of Blood | |
| Author: | Brian Moore |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | political thriller |
| Publisher: | Jonathan Cape (UK) McClelland & Stewart (Canada) Dutton (US) |
| Pub Date: | 1987 |
| Media Type: | |
| Pages: | 182 |
| Isbn: | 978-0-224-02513-3 |
| Oclc: | 18192603 |
| Preceded By: | Black Robe (1985) |
| Followed By: | Lies of Silence (1990) |
The Colour of Blood, published in 1987, is a political thriller by Northern Irish-Canadian novelist Brian Moore about Stephen Bem, a Cardinal in an unnamed East European country who is in conflict with the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy[1] and finds himself caught in the middle of an escalating revolution.
Clancy Sigal, writing in The New York Times, described the novel as a study of faith under pressure: "Almost in thriller form, it is also a wise and illuminating meditation on the labyrinthine forces at work in a Roman Catholic Communist country like Poland (where Mr. Moore served with a United Nations relief group after the war)."[2]
According to critic Jo O'Donoghue, The Colour of Blood deals with the problem of how the modern Catholic Church "is to live in tandem with the secular authority".[3]
In her biography of Moore, Patricia Craig describes The Colour of Blood as a protest against intolerance, "with fanatical Catholicism presented as a destructive force. At the same time the Cardinal himself stands for another kind of Catholicism: moderate and incorruptible, and not unaccommodating of theological uncertainties".[4]
It won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award in 1987 and was also nominated for the Booker Prize.[5]