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I like retellings. There is something intensely satisfying in having another version of an old, known story presented. It must be an echo of the times when each story was retold every time as there was no writing - but of course the modern retelling is usually one with a twist, often subversive, ironic and frequently iconoclastic. Retellings are post-modern by definition, playing with old texts, turning them around, putting them in front of mirrors so they reflect themselves and their interpretations in a never-ending sequence. But retellings are also old, as old as story itself, in their search for the final version, the ultimate, the truth.

Retellings are dangerous things: I don't think I will ever take any orthodox version of the Arthurian story seriously, not after reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon; and I have purposefully not read Kiryl Yeskov's The Last Ring Bearer as I know that those who did never managed to look at the Tolkien's original with the same eyes.

The Christian story, perhaps more than anything else apart from the Greek myths, has inspired countless retellings in European literature; and not surprisingly as the story of Christ and his teachings has such a supreme importance in our whole literary, religious and philosophical tradition. Even among the canonical Gospels there are four, and with subtle (and not so subtle) differences between them. C.K. Stead's novel is a Gospel retelling: a clever, subversive and a provocative one; and if you have an open mind and like playing with ideas you are likely to enjoy it.

As the title suggests, this version of the story is told by Judas, who, contrary to the canonical Gospel version, had not committed suicide but left Galilee to live under the name of Idas in a small coastal village of Sidon, married to a Greek and fathering Greek children. Having lived to the age of seventy and with his memory stimulated by the combination of the news of razing of Jerusalem after the fall of a Jewish uprising and a visit from a travelling evangelist Judas (or Idas) is recalling the seminal events of forty years ago and earlier.

From their childhood and youth together in Nazareth to the three year period of Jesus' preaching that ended on Calvary, Judas remembers Jesus vividly and presents a convincing picture of a brilliant mind with an extraordinary talent for the Word and a truly charismatic ability to inspire loyalty, faith and love. He draws on the possible association with the Essenes brotherhood as one

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