God knows

God Knows is a comic novel by the American writer Joseph Heller, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1984. It is his fourth novel, and it is written as the deathbed memoirs of the biblical King David.

David tells the story of his life as an old man, in no particular order and with the grievances of the dying well to the fore. All the major episodes are in place: the childhood spent herding sheep, the anointing by the prophet Samuel, the fight with Goliath, his service under King Saul and his friendship with Saul's son Jonathan, the business with Bathsheba and her husband, the writing of the Psalms, the rebellion of his son Absalom and the reign of Solomon after him. Heller lets historical detail sit beside jokes and contradictions, and the narrator occasionally shows knowledge of things that had not happened yet when he is supposed to have lived, which neither David nor the reader can account for.

The book was a bestseller, and it reads as a writer's confrontation with mortality as much as a retelling of scripture.