1916 - 1999… Morris west it was one of those exotic names I read when I glanced over the spines of my parents' home library. And with my usual taste for the most erratic reading, I approached The Navigator, a story that predicted Robinsonian adventures, in the style of a Defoe which at the time practically inaugurated the adventure genre, but which finally raised essentially anthropological foundations.
And it turned out that this combination between adventure and mystery Finally, a brushstroke with social, political, religious and moral aspects was prolonged in new novels that I was discovering about what is one of the biggest Australian bestsellers.
In the end, approaching the author, his motives for pouring out his literary creativity, I found those links that unfailingly justify the work ...
Because Morris west He pointed to that prototype of being restless who initially immersed himself fully in religious vows under the cover of the controversial congregation of the Christian Brothers and who later found other focuses of attention.
First performing intelligence work for his country in World War II and then satisfying his desire to know a world he traveled through for decades.
And between some seeds and others, ended up germinating a unique work that did not stop combining the action, around political and geographical tensions or simply as new more fanciful adventures, passed through the sieve of the moral and even the religious.
With an intention that is increasingly critical of the position of the Church and with its religious formation as a baggage from which to critique and explore with knowledge of the facts, West moved between reality and fiction, exploring a narrative aspect that on many occasions bore fruit from the cases real.
So in the West bibliography we can find a bit of everything. But the best thing is that his different forays into one or the other genres always keep that narrative alive and dynamic around characters that tear apart each plot from that fascinating cosmos made up of the sum of perspectives. A writer from the antipodes but who in his extensive bibliography offers an interesting human, social and political vision of the twentieth century.
Top 3 Recommended Books by Morris West
The navigator
When you are a young reader there are always details that escape you when reading according to what types of books are most considered for adults. However, when a reading is equally gratifying, despite those gaps in interpretive ability, it is undoubtedly because the author has been able to raise that duality between a story that moves agilely at the pace of an adventure plot, in parallel with the disquisitions complementary that were intended to expose. And that's what happens with this novel.
A shipwreck and a new world to colonize to survive. The limitations of civilized man in an already alien space, the clashes, misunderstandings and encounters. Love, sex, violence, longings to return to the world to which they belong. Anthropology turned adventure ...
The fisherman's sandals
This is probably West's best novel. Only that I have allowed myself the license to cite in the first place that initiatory book for me regarding the work of this author.
With an evocation of the biblical symbol of the fisherman as the role of every Christian evangelizer, the story masterfully links the strange times of the cold war that occupied a large part of the XNUMXth century, with the institutional role of the Church and its Vatican as a country and therefore political actor to count on.
This novel was the launch of a fascinating trilogy that features prophetic characters as they come to power in the Church. To link politics and religion, West penetrates the links of the new Slavic pope Cyril with the Russian president Kamenev.
The role of these two characters found as executioner and victim is turning towards the necessary understanding to avoid world disaster.
Eminence
Deep down, perhaps by talking about Morris West we are getting closer to the forerunner of so much mystery narrator around the Catholic Church and those as fascinating as supposed secrets.
Clearly Dan Brown and many others owe part of their fame to this forerunner of the great enigmas surrounding the Vatican. With the addition that in each of the books with prominence for the Vatican, unsuspected plot bets end up appearing that have ended up materializing in later times.
Because guessing the origin of two Popes on horseback between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has its that ... The point is that with this novel we take up tangentially what was already developed in the trilogy started by Las sandalias del pescador, continued with the Jesters of God and closed with Lazarus.
Only in this novel, the success with the papal role for the new minister of God who arrived from Argentina with his progressive spirit makes the hair stand on end because of such precise coincidences.
History moves through that magnetic environment of papal replacements, of the darkest wills, of the most evil interests to finally govern one of the moral props of the West.
I recommend you read "The last confession" by the same author
Thank you very much, Achilles. The truth is that I started it but had to leave it due to circumstances.
She is at home in the earrings with the bookmarks on.