|
The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics) | 
| Author: Graham Greene
Creator: John Updike
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $2.99
You Save: $12.01 (80%)
New (49) Used (66) Collectible (5) from $2.99
Rating:  100 reviews
Sales Rank: 4108
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0142437301
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780142437308
ASIN: 0142437301
Publication Date: February 25, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Standard used condition.
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
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. On the run, and in a blur of alcohol and fear, this outlaw meets a dentist, a banana farmer, and a village woman he knew six years earlier. For a while, he is accompanied by a toothless man--whom he refers to as his Judas and does his best to ditch. Always, an adamant lieutenant is only a few hours behind, determined to liberate his country from the evils of the church. On the verge of reaching a safer region, the whisky priest is repeatedly held back by his vocation, even though he no longer feels fit to perform his rites: "When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example?" As his sins and dangers increase, the broken priest comes to confront the nature of piety and love. Still, when he is granted a reprieve, he feels himself sliding into the old arrogance, slipping it on like the black gloves he used to wear. Greene has drawn this man--and all he encounters--vividly and viscerally. He may have said The Power and the Glory was "written to a thesis," but this brilliant theological thriller has far more mysteries--and troubling ideals--than certainties. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland
Product Description
In a poor, remote section of southern Mexico, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest strives to overcome physical and moral cowardice in order to find redemption.
Introduction by John Updike
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 Metaphysical struggle in a sparse, realistic setting January 1, 2009
Waverley36 (Nunya)
Moving, thoughtful, and surprisingly suspenseful novel that explores complex issues of good and evil, metaphysics, and redemption with seeming effortlessness. Greene conveys the poorer, obscurer provinces of a Mexico under fascist rule with the slightest of details and a noir author's knack for ambience. As an atheist police lieutenant ruthlessly tracks the last surviving Catholic priest in the region--the others have been run out or killed under the new government--Greene explores the conscience of the unnamed priest on the run, a woefully imperfect and deeply flawed Mexican known only as the "whisky priest." The details of the priest's persecuted run, to and from the border as needs must, create unbearable tension at times, but most of the novel's dynamism stems from his own inner struggles as he tries to account for his motivations and actions. Not only does the theme of "the man versus the office" of priesthood come under examination, but also the nature of pride and self-delusion as the priest comes to deny that his own dangerous servitude is anything noble. A tour de force of characterization and description, and the best Greene I've yet read.
 great but late September 15, 2008
Joshua David Clark (Santa Barbara, CA)
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Cheapest price I could find and I looked through several sites. The book is in great condition. It took took a long time to get to me. Longer than most other books I ordered at the same time.
A David Attenborough of the literary world. June 4, 2008
John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Like Mr. Attenborough, Graham Green has roamed the world. His interests were not primarily plants and animals, but representatives of the human species, often those profoundly flawed. His novels are set in Vietnam, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, and more. His characters play out their drama against these exotic backgrounds, the expatriates and the natives, and almost certainly it is an interaction between these groups that is a dynamo which drives the novel forward. I used to think that "The Quiet American," set in Vietnam, was his finest, but after re-reading "The Power and the Glory," I would rank them equally.
It is pre-World War II Mexico, anti-clerical forces are reigning, and therefore the agents of the Catholic Church are outside the law, often literally hunted, and if caught, executed. The two principal characters are reflected in each noun of the title, a police lieutenant who vows to bring in the last functioning priest in the province. This is the principal thread of dynamic tension that unifies the novel. There is a similar thread within the hunted priest himself. He is considered a "whiskey priest," with a fondness for brandy, and he has a daughter. Does he really want to escape his pursers, or does he believe his capture would be just punishment for his sins? It is a many-faceted issue that is used to explore his character.
Graham also populates his novel with numerous minor characters, mainly part of the human detritus that has washed up in this developmental backwater. There is an American dentist, barely surviving with his antique tools; a steamship captain, his wife and their precocious daughter; and a German-American couple who have opted for Mexico instead of submitting to conscription during WW I. There are also the natives, a "half-cast" who haunts the priest, and a touchingly stubborn Indian woman with her dead infant.
In reading Greene, and particularly such a novel on the Catholic Church, it is important to reflect that according to his biographers, Greene himself was both Catholic, and profoundly flawed. Along with the works of Carlos Fuentes, this is a quintessential book on Mexico, and therefore a vital read for all Americans in particular.
A man on the way May 16, 2008
Bill Wruck (Rancho Cucamonga, CA USA)
The story is set in southern Mexico in the early 20th century. The protagonist is a beaten-down catholic priest who drinks too much and fathered an illegimate daughter. He is torn by the reality of his sin and the product of that sin, a beautiful little girl. He is a wanted man and tries to fulfill his calling as he hides from the law. At that time in parts of Mexico the church was being persecuted by the government and religion was outlawed. Churches were razed and priests were forced to renounce their faith and take wives or face the firing squad. The book is not about theology and doesn't glorify the church.
It is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a very human being caught up in circumstances he can't control and trying to do the right thing in impossible situations. He struggles daily with doubts about his effectiveness and his very reason for continuing to resist. The author shows the humanity of the fugitive priest as well as his persecutors. The priest, although protesting that he is a coward, follows the hard path of righteousness as he comes to see it and triumphs in the end.
I found it fascinating.
 Glorious human frailty April 3, 2008
whj
Graham Greene probably is one of the most intriguing writers to me. I can't say I like the story itself, but his ability to write such complex matters as sin, martyrdom, frailty, politics, and many more and weave them so coherently with interesting characters is just amazing. Just think of the name whiskey priest! The poetry in his prose and insightful reflections is beautiful as well.
|
|
|
|
powered by full speed | |
