His Real Life

His Real Life is about the young life of the West's dominant figure, Jesus of Nazareth. Its focus is on his central desire to live a full human life on earth, not only as his parents' loving child and as a son of the nation of Israel, but to transcend all boundaries in order to live in deepest beauty and widest truth as the universal man. The action unfolds through Jesus' vivid encounters with individuals of every loved and various kind, through the early years of his child-awe at the creation, his event-packed adolescence, and all the startling physical adventures and soul journeys through which Jesus gradually grasps his identity. This drama of self-discovery peaks on the Jordan at Jesus' baptism, when, as a man matured by experience and faith, Jesus achieves the awareness of who he is and who, therefore, we all are. As such, Jesus' struggle for self-clarification is the story of everyone.

Catherine Hoffmann was born in Sopron, Hungary. She migrated to Australia with her family as a refugee in 1956. Catherine has published five volumes of fiction: Crystal (1988), Forms of Bliss (1989), Of Exile and Yearning (2009), Across the Burning (2010), and Taking Wing (2011). She is also the author of a nonfiction book on the suffering of incurable illness, Perilous Journey (1989).