a book
The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene · 1940 · 288 pages
One of Greene’s most powerful novels, the book takes as its theme the era of religious suppression in Mexico during the early 1930’s. An unnamed Catholic priest, an alcoholic with a shameful past in search of either oblivion or redemption, travels through Mexico administering the rites of the church to the poor landless peasants, hunted by a remorseless police officer and always in fear of being betrayed by those he is attempting to help.
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Colin Firth
“This is about a man—the whiskey priest—on the run in a Mexican state during a purge of religious figures. The most poignant thing in the story, for me, is that the priest has had a child. He wants to repent, but how can you find salvation when you can’t hate the sin? He’s stuck in that paradox: The one thing that prevents him from repenting is love. That so interests me—the idea of looking for spiritual salvation in what is otherwise an impossibly compromised life.”↗