How does good spoil, and how can bad be redeemed? In his penetrating novel The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene explores corruption and atonement through a priest and the people he encounters. In the 1930s one Mexican state has outlawed the Church, naming it a source of greed and debauchery. The priests have been rounded up and shot by firing squad--save one, the whisky priest.
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11526.37 | Fiction literature | 3 October 2011
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The Journeyer
Marco Polo was nicknamed "Marco of the millions" because his Venetian countrymen took the grandiose stories of his travels to be exaggerated, if not outright lies. As he lay dying, his priest, family, and friends offered him a last chance to confess his mendacity, and Marco, it is said, replied "I have not told the half of what I saw and did."
In Osterley. a marshy Norfolk backwater, a man lies dying on a rainy autumn night. But while natural causes will surely claim Herbert Baker’s life in a matter of hours, his last request baffles his family and friends. Baker, a devout Protestant, inexplicably demands to see the town’s Catholic priest for a last confession. The old man dies without knowing that the very priest who gave him comfort will follow him to the grave just a few weeks later–the victim of a appalling murder.
Legends told of how the evil God Torak had coveted the power of the Orb of Aldur, until defeated in a final battle. But the prophecy spoke of a time when he would awake and again seek dominance over the world. Now the Orb has been stolen by a priest of Torak, and that time is at hand.
