While the events of Saramago's life of Christ will be known to
readers of the conventional Gospels, his approach brings an
astonishing freshness to the familiar stories. The human aspect of
Jesus is stressed above all else, and Saramago's Gospel ends at
Golgotha with the death of Jesus. Mary and Joseph are typical of
their place and time, simple people living ordinary lives, in
accordance with the ways of their religion, until interrupted by
the arrival of angels. Beautifully translated by Pontiero, the
winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature tells his story with
an easy wit, and embellishes it with inspired poetic touches. The
result is a profound and moving work which leads the reader to
reassess the original, and come to a new appreciation of its events
and their significance. (Kirkus UK)
Saramago’s narrative is a secular re-telling of the Gospel, following the life of Christ from his conception to his crucifixion. A naïve Jesus is the son, not of God, but of Joseph who is chosen to lay down his life for man. In the desert it is not Satan but God that Christ tussles with, an autocrat with whom he has an unbalanced and unsettled relationship. In a contemporary twist, Jesus carries with him his father’s guilt for saving his only child from Herod’s Murder of the Innocents. Saramago presents a Jesus who appreciates the ordinary joys and virtues of human life – family, friendship, love – and who struggles to reconcile these earthly virtues with the desires of God and the consequences of his destiny. By subverting the gospels, Saramago has written a dark and provoking parable, an idiosyncratic, satirical and humane investigation into the origins of Christianity.
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