Novel
Barabbas
Pär Lagerkvist · 1950
Synopsis
Barabbas, condemned to death, is released at Passover in place of Jesus of Nazareth, and he goes up to Golgotha to see the man who dies in his place die. He cannot shake it off: he prowls around the first Christians of Jerusalem, listens to them, wonders why the one they call the son of God let himself be tortured, and would like to believe without managing to. Years later, a slave in a mine, he forms a bond with Sahak, a converted slave, whose charity touches him without his reason following.
Context
The novel appeared from Bonnier in 1950; an immediate commercial success, it was quickly translated into at least ten languages, including French the same year, from Stock, in Lucien Maury's Bibliothèque scandinave, by Marguerite Gay and Gerd de Mautort, with a letter from André Gide. The author himself drew a play from it, first staged in 1953, the year in which Alf Sjöberg's film, one of the largest Swedish productions of its time, competed at Cannes; there followed a film by Richard Fleischer, with Anthony Quinn, and a television film in 2012. The narrative sets the death of Jesus against the fate of Barabbas.
Who it is for
A short novel in twenty chapters, in a spare prose; it can be read in Swedish, French or English.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most famous work, hailed as a masterpiece from its publication, and crowned in France in 1951 with the Best Foreign Book prize.
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