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This other Eden: Adam and Eve in Paradise, by Eça de Queirós, reviewed

Published in 1897, Queiros’s novella revisits Christianity’s first man and woman, departing from the Creation story in ways both playful and profound

25 January 2025

9:00 AM

25 January 2025

9:00 AM

Adam and Eve in Paradise Eça de Queirós, translated by Margaret Jull Costa

New Directions, pp.64, 11

When José Saramago denounced the Bible as a ‘catalogue of cruelties’ at the launch of his novel Cain in 2009, the response from the Catholic church in Portugal was fast and frosty. The country’s conference of bishops labelled his comments ‘offensive’, adding: ‘Insults do no one any good, particularly from a Nobel prizewinner.

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