My Name Was Judas by C K Stead

My Name Was Judas

C K Stead

At first glance this could be a religious education text book, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it an absorbing page turner - a retelling of one of the world's best known stories from a different and provocative point of view. The characters' usage of modern idiom can jar a little, but just go with it as the story is so original it plays on your mind long after you've put the book down. Stimulating, clever and quietly subversive.

Extract
Soon we were passing the caves where we'd played so often as boys. I didn't know where we were going, and neither did he. It was a long time before he stopped again, and now he grasped me by the arm and looked into my eyes. 'Come with me,' he said.
'Where?'
'Don't ask where, Judas. Just come.'
I've heard it said that others among his disciples made up their minds in the instant of being asked; that some of them just dropped whatever they were doing and followed him. I'm not sure whether that's true, and it certainly would not have been true of me if I had not been so burdened with a grief he alone knew how to assuage. But that was how things were, and that was the outcome. In an instant the next few years of my life had been determined.
Parallels
  • Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve
  • The Red Tent by Anita Diamant