The Damascus Road

February 1, 2019
A poet, novelist, and biographer tells the story of a pivotal figure from the early days of Christianity.He was "a small, stumbling, stooped man with a squint," a Jew and a Roman citizen whose early life was marked by privilege, with tutors and slaves. After a good education, he entered the family tent-making business, but he also took to "ferreting out Jewish heretics" who followed prophets such as the "rustic Nazarene called Jesus." Then something happened on the road to Damascus, and Saul of Tarsus became Paul, a leading figure of early Christianity. Parini (The Way of Jesus, 2018, etc.), who has written fictional biographies of Tolstoy and Melville, tells the story in sections narrated by Paul or by Luke, author of a Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles and companion on Paul's years of travel throughout Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. Luke is a Greek physician and a willing scribe to Paul as he formulates doctrines, sermons, and letters that will become a dominant voice of the New Testament. They complement each other: Where Paul is passionate and visionary, Luke is measured and skeptical. Parini enlivens a narrative familiar to many with fine scenes and writerly touches, such as "houses white as dice tumbling downhill to the pebble-strewn beach." He captures the larger politico-religious picture, with Paul as the constant stone in the sandal of Jewish, Christian, and Roman leaders alike, with his drive to shape and spread the message of Jesus sparking doctrinal clashes and threatening a fragile coexistence. The evangelist is beaten and whipped and jailed and remains indomitable. Parini also offers a suggestion of Paul's homosexuality that is plausible but of questionable relevance. The bigger question is whether all this adds up to a novel--perhaps a holy picaresque.An exceptional character study that still may test some readers' tolerance for unrelievedly religious matter.

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Starred review from March 1, 2019
Sweeping in scope, yet as intimate as a breath?that is how Parini presents the story of the Apostle Paul. The parameters of Paul's life are well known, and books about him?fiction and nonfiction?appear regularly. But few are written with the intense detail and keen insight that Parini provides. The story starts with a precocious youth who becomes a persecutor of those who follow Jesus. As the title implies, the singular moment of Paul's life comes when a vision of Jesus appears to Paul as he travels on the Damascus Road, changing his life and, arguably, the world. From there, Parini presents a man in motion, overflowing with thoughts and ideas, explanations pouring from his lips faster than he can form words, moving as swiftly as he can around the ancient world, spurred by his burning passion and Jesus' promise of the world's imminent end. It's a deeply intimate portrait (and it's good history, too, highlighting the women who supported and often subsidized the Way); however, we don't have to take just Paul's words for it: there is an alternate narrator, telling the story from his perspective. Luke, Paul's companion and scribe, is often enthralled, sometimes infuriated, but a constant friend. Parini is a poet, and the beauty of his language is everywhere, whether he's describing the glories of the ancient world or the form and faces of the young people Paul admires with a profound wistfulness. A moving read, both earthy and transcendent.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2018

Author of the internationally best-selling The Last Station, fiction about Tolstoy's final days that served as the basis of an Academy Awardnominated film, poet, novelist, and biographer Parini stays in historical fiction mode with this study of Paul of Tarsus, a Jewish scholar violently opposed to the new followers of Jesus of Nazareth. An illuminating moment on the road to Damascus turns him into the apostle Paul, and his perceptions here alternate with those of gospel writer Luke, his travel companion and putative ghostwriter.

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