The author of The Slap plunges into the tumult of early Christianity, with a visceral portrait of the life of Saint PaulChristianity stands on a foundational irony: the world-revolutionary creed of universal love emerged from a social and political ferment of rancour, hatred and humiliation. Christos Tsiolkas, the Australian novelist who a decade ago touched a nerve by vivisecting liberal fraudulence with The Slap, plunges now into the gore and moral stench of the early Christian period. Imagining the all-too-human reality behind the biblical narrative that shaped western civilisation, he evokes a world that is rank with anti-imperialist resentment, constant brutality, violence against women and, most obsessively, sexual shame.Like Emmanuel Carrère´s recent nonfiction work The Kingdom, Damascus is primarily an attempt to understand the character of Saint Paul, the pious Jew and persecutor of Christians who, after an alleged encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, made it his life´s mission to spread Jesus´s teachings throughout the Roman empire. Continue reading...
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