Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023 Condé, the perpetual Nobel Prize candidate and Grande Dame of Caribbean literature, has declared thShortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023 Condé, the perpetual Nobel Prize candidate and Grande Dame of Caribbean literature, has declared that this will probably be her last novel, as at 86, she is losing her eyesight and hence had to dictate the story to her husband (and translator) as well as a friend. Still, the novel has made her the oldest person to ever be nominated for the International Booker.
The book is inspired by Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Coetzee's trilogy The Childhood of Jesus, The Schooldays of Jesus, and The Death of Jesus. Condé, who hails from Guadeloupe, now gives us a POC Jesus (not like the guy from Bethlehem who was, as a lot of Christian art teaches us, a pale blonde beefcake *cough cough*) who experiences typical episodes from the New Testament in a Caribbean setting, with added folklore and turns that involve a journey (hello, bildungsroman) and social commentary (like the refugee crisis). Protagonist Pascal (the Jesus figure) is abandoned by his mother on Easter Sunday, and rumor has it he might be a child of God - but he also displays a lot of human fallibility and emotion. Condé's mother was a believer, while her father was an atheist, so the questioning of faith and religious tropes is also a central theme.
All in all, the book is surprisingly fresh, as although the material it is based on is extremely well-known, what Condé makes of it is often rather unexpected. Still, the pacing is less than ideal and the overall length slightly excessive.
Loading...
