The Crime of Father Amaro (Dedalus European Classics)
and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in The Crime of Father Amaro (Dedalus European Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
Amaro Vieira, son of servants and orphaned at six, is brought up by his parents' employer, the Marquesa de Alegros. He is well treated and happy, but the Marquesa has decided that Amaro will enter the priesthood, the solution for many of Portugal's orphans. It is a profession for which he has no real enthusiasm but he sees no choice but to accept it. In the seminary he proves a competent pupil but feels agonized that life is passing him by. Even so, once a priest, all goes well until he is appointed to the country town of Lieria. Here he encounters provincial hypocrisy and deceit at its most extreme, and his relationships with his canon, the venal Dias, and the beautiful, young and willing Amelia ensure the collapse of his fragile moral fibre and expose in him a inner frailty that leads to tragedy. Written between 1875 and 1879 and revised several times, this is the work of one of Portugal's most respected 19th-century writers. Considered scandalous at the time, it portrays the clergy as manipulative and self-seeking and the secular world as no better. Lieria is full of people prepared to give advice that they have no intention of taking themselves and the priests are quite happy to use the populace's fear of eternal damnation to open a few doors or grease a few palms. The novel retains its power to disturb in the way in which the writer conveys each character's self-justification. Modern in its simplicity, it shows the way that homogeneity of purpose is achieved through self-deceit or the blaming of others, This process is depicted without overt judgement or moralising, making it finally a depressing norm in Queiroz's world. Written with restraint yet often deeply lyrical, this is a welcome addition to the range of classic novels available in English translation. (Kirkus UK)
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cynical, biting, ruthless and the best novel I've read in 10 years,
By
This review is from: The Crime of Father Amaro (Paperback)
Firstly, ignore the "official" Amazon review under the synopsis - this is intended for the film based on the book.The book is firmly set in Portugal, although ranges as far away as Paris in its search for reasons to heap opprobrium on the Catholic Church. Whether this was intended as an indictment of Portuguese culture, the Catholic Church, or both is not clear. Either way, the book tells the enthralling tale of a young man whose ambition is to be a priest. Not, you understand, because he is Holy. Because it brought "fringe benefits" as they might say. Celibacy is not the counter to these benefits that you might expect and thereby revolves one of Father Amaro's most telling (but not only) sins. Consequences follow actions and hence the novel unfolds. I can only imagine the reaction to this novel when it was first published, but even today it is breathtakingly cynical. I loved every word and heartily recommend it to anyone who is Catholic and also anybody who isn't.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly great novel,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Crime of Father Amaro (Paperback)
One of the best novels by (arguably) the best novelist Portugal have ever had, "The crime of Father Amaro" deals with the power of the church in a small provincial town in 1860's Portugal. Here we can see how powerful the representatives of church are, but we also look at their hypocrite lifestyle.In the center of the book is Amaro, a young priest, ordained without ever being consulted and the love affair he has with Amelia, the daugther of his hostess. Made recently into a film in Mexico, the novel has the power and strenght laking in the fim. It is a pity that the only reason this is not hailed as universal classic is the language it was written.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Binding with Briars my Joys and Desires,
By
This review is from: The Crime of Father Amaro (Dedalus European Classics) (Paperback)
The Crime of Father Amaro was a revelation to this reader. It's not just breathtakingly satirical and (as other readers have noted) cynical, but it manages to combine this with real wisdom and compassion (a difficult trick to pull off, since cynicism is so often heartless); and (in this superb translation by Margaret Jull Costa) comes across as wickedly stylish and inventive in terms of its language. The range of characterization is masterly; and what I particularly liked was the way in which our sympathies change as we read on. Father Amaro appears more sinned against than sinning for about the first half of the narrative: we feel genuinely sorry for his social isolation and angry at the injustice of his enforced celibacy. But then, when we discover how selfish and corrupt he has become, while still acknowledging that society IS at least partly to blame, we gradually stop feeling that his actions are in any way justifiable. The tragic consequences of his behaviour come with a chilling suddenness and savagery, and there is a wonderfully ironic final section set some years later, which ferociously condemns not just Father Amaro himself but the whole of Portuguese society at this time. And how topical this novel seems at a time when the Catholic Church is rent by scandals of a related kind!This is a truly great book: it's up there with Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, and Anna Karenina as one of the titanic masterpieces of world fiction, and deserves to be much more widely known. I can't wait to read more of de Queiroz's fiction.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
