In the Last Blue

This novel of the Spanish Inquisition was an acclaimed contribution to Catalan letters on its 1994 release. In an act of madness that he says was commanded him by an angel, Majorcan religious Jew Rafel Cortes tries to circumcise his adult male converso relatives. In the midst of this rampage, he catches his daughter Aina having sex with the Christian Juli Ramis and attacks him, too. His cousin, a silversmith also named Rafel Cortes, is a widower converso with a deep admiration of Catholic ritual; he's also an informer prized by the local clergy. The Jewish Rafel's extreme, irrational violence is meant to foreshadow the irrationality that sends 37 members of the Majorcan Jewish community (including the Jewish Rafel) to the stake after they're captured in a botched emigration attempt. The internecine Church and Jewish community politics leading up to that horror are treated with equal contempt by Riera, who notes in an afterword that the novel "does not aim to finger old wounds or open new ones." The awkward translation doesn't help in interpreting the book's graphic shock tactics and pulpy tonal shifts (the sex is as graphic as the violence), so it's hard to determine what Riera's aims actually are. (Jan.)