There is also no antagonist, who is usually a tall, dark and either particularly good-looking or particularly ugly villain, whose motives are always shaped by evil in some form. Es mangelt auch an allerlei haarsträubenden Verschwörungstheorien, die zwar unterhaltsam aber vollkommen unglaubwürdig sind. As a long standing fan of Robert Harris’s books it pains me to have to say that I found this one rather disappointing.

As a fan of Robert Harris, I was looking forward to reading this but was unfortunately disappointing. I have also witnessed the great social justice work that is done by liberation theologians and practitioners in Latin America. The book is set in the context of the death of a pope and the subsequent papal conclave to elect his successor.There’s a great novel waiting to be written about a papal election – but for now, I’m afraid there’s only black smoke blowing through the literary chimney. The Pope “had stayed [there] as a cardinal before the Conclave that elected him and had never moved out: one look at the luxurious apartment to which he was entitled .

Cardinal Mandorff had “made his reputation at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt with a treatise on the origins and theological foundations of clerical celibacy. Among the papabile there is Tedesco the traditionalist, Tremblay the ambitious North American and Adeyemi the African with strong views on the role of women and gay marriage.So far 127,253,037 votes have been counted of the people who elected the next President of the United States. Robert Harris nos presenta uno de esos supuestos en esta magnífica novela, y la sitúa aproximadamente al fallecimiento del actual Papa Francisco, aunque este nunca sea mencionado en dichos términos. Cardinals (there are more Cardinals than this, but there is a rule that those over 80 years of age cannot vote in the conclave) are sequestered in conclave to decide who will be the next spiritual leader of those 1. Confronting the sanctity of religion was extremely interesting, but could also read a little drily on times. And, indeed, after a few more moments, Tremblay sighed – a long, theatrical, almost ecstatic exhalation.

While the intricacies of institutional procedures may be fascinating to Robert Harris, they don’t necessarily provide the drama and entertainment demanded by the readers of fiction.It made for entirely engrossing reading seeing how the traditions of the church and modern-day life intersected, and also the many long-established customs that were repeated as the new pope's election was underway. Harris clearly has a strong impulse to educate and inform: what little I know about aqueducts and volcanoes, for example, for better or worse, derives almost entirely from his novel Pompeii, and there is doubtless a whole generation who owe their knowledge of the second world war not to John Keegan or Martin Gilbert, or even to World War II in Colour running endlessly on the Discovery channel, but rather to Fatherland and Enigma.

The pope has died, descriptions of a peoples pope, a pope who refused to live in the grandeur of the Vatican apartments, point to this representing our current Pope, Francis. A well written novel, my first by this author, and a wonderful portrayal of not only the differences in the many cardinals but how many differences there are in their views of the Church's future. You might question whether there is much drama to be had in the deliberations of a group of men over 60, largely confined in one place.

But in the end, powerful people are just people, capable of the same deceit, delusion and hypocrisy as you or I – except, of course, no one would be interested in reading about our pathetic deceits, delusions and hypocrisies. Europeans hold a huge advantage in electing the Pope, regardless of the number of Catholics they represent. I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to read this novel but something about it's cover drew me to the book and the fact that a couple of my goodread friend's enjoyed it I knew I had to step outside for comfort zone and give it a try and what a enjoyable and interesting read it was.