The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

One of the most scandalous books of the 20th century, translated into all major European languages. The Catholic Church labeled it a “puff piece on the New Testament,” but it is precisely for this novel that José Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize.

José Saramago is one of the greatest contemporary Portuguese writers, a Nobel Prize in Literature laureate (1998). In the novel “The Gospel According to Jesus,” he offers his own—deep and original—interpretation of episodes from the New Testament and tries to find the real reasons for the suffering that Jesus and his father Joseph endured. The figure of Jesus lacks heroism: he is a man with all the troubles and doubts inherent to people, with desires and mistakes…