Trapped in the treachery of the Inquisition in India

Set in 17th-century India during the Portuguese occupation, "Guardian of the Dawn" describes a time when the Catholic Church brought the terrible power of the Inquisition against the Hindus and Jews and Muslims of Goa.

Novelist Richard Zimler powerfully delineates that murderous time in that exotic place.

Zimler — author of "The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon," among other novels — is a writer who is not afraid to deal with the complexities of existence, the tragedy of good intentions gone awry, and life being cut short before it has truly begun.

He makes the Inquisition concrete in its brutalities. For Jews cognizant of history, it is as if the Holocaust was yesterday, pogroms were a few days ago — and the Inquisition last week. And Jews who have forgotten their history cannot move Jewish life forward. Yet, in Judaism it is true also that suffering is not an excuse to act immorally or make others suffer needlessly.

The novel, told in the form of a memoir, takes up the obligation we have as humans not to use our own suffering to misjudge others. Sadly, the novel's protagonist, Tiago Zarco, becomes both the hero and the villain of the story. He is a hero because of his good heart and actions but also a villain in that he becomes so embittered by what he suffers during the Inquisition that his revenge goes beyond justice and leads to further unnecessary grief.

Tiago is the oldest child in a family with a Portuguese Jewish father and a Hindu-born mother who has converted to Judaism while remaining true to her Hindu customs and culture.

The central trauma in Tiago's childhood is the death of his mother, who — in a beautifully imagined scene — returns from death to tell Tiago to take care of his little sister. Tiago does his best; he is a truly loving brother and son but his efforts meet head on with the cruelty and selfishness of human beings and the barbarity of the Roman Catholic Church during the Inquisition.

Yet Tiago's life in India was hopeful until the tensions caused by religious persecution penetrate his household and his father, a righteous Jew, is prosecuted by the Catholic Church. After his father's torture and death, Tiago is arrested and undergoes years of imprisonment.

But even before the arrests, Tiago's family situation had become tense when his sister decides to marry her adopted cousin, who is Catholic. The Inquisition casts a long shadow on everyone within its reach. And the conflicts between the sister and her brother and father are tragic, but ring all too true.

Tiago was determined to keep the family together. Thinking of his sister he remembers: "I was unable to imagine that all of our years of caring would come to nothing." Zimler's Tiago speaks for all of those who have seen family love falter or fall apart, leaving blood relationships beyond repair.

By the time Tiago leaves prison, after a false confession and false conversion to Catholicism, he has set himself on a course of revenge upon family members whom he believes have betrayed his father.

Zimler portrays a man who realizes only when his revenge is exhausted, that he has taken the wrong path, for Tiago's vengeance has only added to his own misery.

A representative figure, Tiago is a Jew who sees the commonalities of all of those, whether Jewish, Hindu or Muslim, who suffered during the Inquisition.

"I've been able to see beyond myself in the dungeons of Goa, Lisbon, and a hundred other cities in Asia, Europe, and America," Tiago says. "I've seen the men and women languishing there. I wish I could offer them more than this, but this is all I have."

Zimler has created a novel of rare insight and deep understanding. The novel is a comment not only on history but also on our time—and the implications of today's religious fanaticism as well.




"Guardian of the Dawn" by Richard Zimler (416 pages, Delta, $14).