A convincing imagining of the life of Paul, told in alternating passages narrated by Paul himself and his companion, the author of Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. Unlike Peter, or Judas, or Jesus himself, scriptural Paul always seems distant, a disembodied voice exhorting the faithful. Parini fleshes him out in a way that makes him seem real, if still not always likeable. Parini is an academic as well as a poet and novelist, and he manages to straddle the line between a novelistic presentation of scholarship and an actual work of the imagination. A nice exploration of the tensions between the Greek/Gentile followers of Jesus and the Jewish apostles who knew him in life.
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