Do you hope that your laws will save you? Do you hope for the shelter of your police, your army? The protection of your spies, detectives, agents? Do you think your gowns, your uniforms, your epaulettes, your ties will form your chainmail? Do you think all of your prosecutor’s ID cards and all your deputy’s badges in all of their colours will cover you like a shield? Do you think you can hide in your comfortable apartments, at your apple-tree dachas, on your blue-sky foreign beaches, in your velvet theatre box seats? You’re blind! How could you be so wrong? Do you not see that my warmongering is here already, not at your walls, but within your families?”
Fathers abuse their power, and states abuse theirs; law enforcement agencies do it all the time, not even God is exempt of this vice. Our protagonist, Eve, takes a journey from ordinary Moscow gay man to star of the resistance. He lives in his own little world, full of sex, love and fun; a pariah to those around him, closeted yet free, scared yet courageous. Just when it seems like there’s no escape from this violent, macho world, he discovers his zeal for the fight. In his sufferings and struggles Eve is no exception to the rule – and yet not everyone can bear the cross he bears. His story is paralleled by another, of two different messiahs from two thousand years ago – Yeshua and Judas.
The Gospel According To… could be called documentary fiction. It is based on real events that have happened to real people, including the author himself, as well as others who met with the repressive machinery of an authoritarian state. Even the biblical part of the novel is no invention – it is based on the apocryphal gospels, damned by the Church.
The Gospel According To… has received funding from English PEN’s PEN Translates programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas.
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