An international bestseller when it first appeared in 1941 and the inspiration for an Academy-award winning film, Franz Werfel's historical novel The Song of Bernadette has received surprisingly little critical attention. Written against the background of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the Song chronicles the Marian apparitions at Lourdes, France, in 1858 and the life of the young visionary, Bernadette Soubirous. A once-celebrated émigré writer, Werfel identified himself as both Jewish and Christian. His Song of Bernadette deserves recognition not only as a masterpiece of realistic hagiography, but also as a complex philosophical and theological commentary on modernism and Judeo-Christianity.
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