Los mejores libros jamas escritos.

Por dentro se movian silenciosamente los deseos, como serpientes tranquilas en su nido.

Amado Vieira es un joven sacerdote que consigue ser trasladado de la parroquia rural en la que ejerce a otra en la bella ciudad de Leiria. Una vez alli, se ve inmerso en un ambiente de libertinaje y desenfreno, al que es arrastrado por un grupo de sacerdotes de la localidad; uno de ellos incluso llega a alojarle en casa de su amante. Es alli donde Amaro conoce a Amelia, la muchacha mas hermosa de la ciudad y que devendra la causa de su perdicion. La publicacion de esta obra, en 1875, desato un escandalo en el pais no solo por el deseo del autor de ridiculizar al clero, sino tambien por su denuncia de la hipocresia de la sociedad de provincias.

La presente edicion incluye una introduccion a cargo del escritor portugues Jose Luis Peixoto, quien conduce al lector hacia los entresijos de la obra que consagro a Eca de Queiros como una de las grandes figuras de la literatura universal.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

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

Eca de Queiros’s novel The Crime of Father Amaro is a lurid satire of clerical corruption in a town in Portugal (Leira) during the period before and 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 and soon lusts after–and 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 and 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 and suitor to Amelia; Father Brito, the strongest and 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.

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