The Crime of Father Amaro: Scenes from the Religious Life

An unflinching portrait of a priest who seduces his landlady's daughter, made into an acclaimed & controversial motion picture. 

Eça de Queirós's novel The Crime of Father Amaro is a lurid satire of clerical corruption in a town in Portugal (Leira) during the period before & after the 1871 Paris Commune. At the start, a priest physically explodes after a fish supper while guests at a birthday celebration are "wildly dancing a polka." Young Father Amaro (whose name means "bitter" in Portuguese) arrives in Leira & soon lusts after—& is lusted after by—budding Amelia, dewy-lipped, devout daughter of Sao Joaneira who has taken in Father Amaro as a lodger. 

What ensues is a secret love affair amidst a host of compelling minor characters: Canon Dias, glutton & Sao Joaneira's lover; Dona Maria da Assuncao, a wealthy widow with a roomful of religious images, agog at any hint of sex; Joao Eduardo, repressed atheist, free-thinker & suitor to Amelia; Father Brito, "the strongest & most stupid priest in the diocese;" the administrator of the municipal council who spies at a neighbor's wife through binoculars for hours every day. 

Eça's incisive critique flies like a shattering mirror, jabbing everything from the hypocrisy of a rich & powerful Church, to the provincialism of men & women in Portuguese society of the time, to the ineptness of politics or science as antidotes to the town's ills. What lurks within Eça's narrative is a religion of tolerance, wisdom, & equality nearly forgotten. Margaret Jull Costa has rendered an exquisite translation & provides an informative introduction to a story that truly spans all ages.

One of the leading intellectuals of the "Generation of 1870," José Maria de Eça de Queirós (1845-1900) wrote twenty books, founded literary reviews, & for most of his life also worked as a diplomat, in Havana, London, & Paris.