Reading on vacation

I brought several books to read on this vacation, two by José Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel Prize for Litterature winner 1998 who died about 3 weeks ago. He had a long and fruitful career as a writer and his books are interesting read.

He also took a different look at life and I am currently reading The Gospel according to Jesus Christ, a book written in 1991.

Aegean Sea off Mykonos Island, 08 October. 

There are no Gospel by Jesus and this book at first is a difficult read by the third chapter you see where Saramago is taking the story and it becomes interesting.

In this book Jesus is not the Son of God but that of Joseph, he leaves home at 13. Mary Magdalene is not a convert by his lover, and God is a fallible, power hungry autocrat. Saramago writes a dark parable, a secular gospel, fitting for our time, at least this is my take on it.

The other one is also by Jose Saramago, The year of the death of Ricardo Reis, published in 1984. I just started reading this one, the story is set in 1936 in Portugal, when the clouds of Fascism are gathering. Salazar is about to become the long time dictator of this small nation, while Spain next door is going through its Civil War, Italy has also fallen to Fascism as Germany. Ricardo Reis has returned from Brazil after 16 years and engages into a rambling discourse on art, truth, philosophy and destiny.

In Saramago’s books I find that destiny appears as a constant, what is our destiny or the subject cannot escape his destiny.

The third book is by Jan Morris, titled Venice. Morris has written many books, I’ve read the one on Trieste, after visiting the city last year. His trilogy on British power,

Heaven’Command, Pax Britanica and Farewell the Trumpets are all very interesting. In Heaven’s Command I discovered parts of the history of Canada I had either forgotten or had never heard of. Morris also explains how it was Christian missionaries who pushed and lobbied for the creation of an Empire, not business or military interests. The little people had to be brought to civilization through Christ’s message.  The same thing happened in Canada. Our foreign policy towards China was developed through the advocacy of  Canadians who were missionaries in China. Some had children who were born in China and had become Canadian diplomats. This led our then Prime Minister Trudeau to open up to Mao and company in 1969, years before Kissinger or Nixon had thought about it and years before China could ever be thought of as a potential commercial market, being caught at the time in what can be described as a Civil war aptly called the Cultural Revolution.

So as I sit here on my patio in  Mykonos looking out at the Aegean sea, I read on enjoying the quiet.