Behold the Man - Michael Moorcock

Karl Glogauer has appropriated a time machine and travelled back in time to Palestine in the year 29AD, to fulfil his ambition to be present at the crucifixion of Christ. This rather short novel details both his arrival in the past, during which he is injured and cared for by a religious sect known as the Essenes and gets to meet both John the Baptist and Jesus the Nazarene, and parts of his previous life in the 20th century which are used to establish his deeply inward-looking and somewhat self-loathing character and the events which lead up to his acquiring the time machine. Glogauer is an exceptionally well-drawn character, and the book itself is very well ...