The Gospel authors, far from being community leaders preserving oral sayings for largely illiterate followers, were highly literate members of a small, erudite upper crust, distant in experience, attitude, and geography from any Galilean peasant preachers.
—
Adam Gopnik,
The New Yorker,
24 Mar. 2025
Set in the Alentejo region of southern Portugal, where Mateus was raised, a peasant community of grape-pickers become agents in an open-air ritual of remembrance and rebellion.
Not only does the peon and con man Tom end up refashioning himself as the rich and carefree Dickie, but Highsmith’s novel itself was a retelling of Henry James’s The Ambassadors.
—
Hillary Kelly,
The Atlantic,
19 Apr. 2024
Not afraid but brave, not weak but empowered, not peons but partners.
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