Thirty Three

What if Jesus had been born in the twentieth century? What if he had been Brazilian? This is a work of fiction spanning thirty-three years, between 1940 and 1974, in which imagined characters move among real historical figures in a story that holds the reader to the last page. Thirty-Three is not a book about religion. The subject never comes up. It is about human relationships across the turbulent stretch of Brazilian history that runs from the Second World War to the military dictatorship. The three main characters: Emmanuel, the humble son of Joseph and Mary, from Pernambuco; Saul de Tarso, heir to a family with a long military tradition; and the mysterious Israel, a young communist who learns early to challenge the men he calls "the owners of power," travel different roads until their lives cross. Who, in the end, was right? The military, the communists, or none of them? Read it and draw your own conclusions.