Henryk Sienkiewicz

Quo Vadis

It takes a lot of daring -if not arrogance- for a serious writer to put together in the same page (260 in my edition) the persons of Peter and Paul, the two apostles, in the same room talking. Even more, the author has Paul say that Peter is his "superior", which quite denotes a Catholic slant. But anyhow, I excuse him for these escesses of imagination because, overall, this is a good historical novel. Not accurate, and not only for the facts mentioned but in a general sense too.

The tone swings from sarcastic and humorous to melodramatic romance. Thus its ups and downs. It tried my patience in the latter cases, but I guess I got over it. I would say it is a very interesting novel because of the scope of its subject, which interests me greatly, the Roman Empire, the beginning of Christianity in Rome, the lives of the first martyrs, the persecutions, the contrast of visions: pagan and Christian. Luckily the author was able to hold all these ingredients in one single story pretty well, despite the deficiencies noted.

I would have expected to see in these pages the names of historical figures mentioned, like those of Peter, Paul or Nero, but not with these familiarity -though to a different reader it might be an incentive instead of an annoyance-, because I would have preferred that the author would limit himself to aknowledged facts and not make them up when historical characters are involved in the plot. The consequence is -to me- that they look less real, as part of a soap-opera, and this is bad taste or, at least, cheap art.

Anyhow, since there's not much out there about this time and subject, I recommend this book gladly. It's a worth read.