El discípulo

After his father’s death, the Chilean journalist Sebastián Torres travels to California to enroll in a doctorate degree in Literature. At the university he meets the legendary academic of religious studies Oliver Ryan and the latter’s disciple: his compatriot, Max Infante. The professor suddenly dies and Infante discovers that his professor kept an extraordinary discovery in secret for years: he had received, under strange circumstances, a document –perhaps apocryphal– that would shed unexpected light on the origins of Christianity. This is the starting point in a series of inquiries, intrigues, mysteries and scandals, marked by ambition, vile actions and shame.

Based on a true story, “The Disciple” tackles various literary genres: campus novel, educational fiction and detective novel. The plot revolves around falsification, simulation as a possible avenue to get at the truth. In it are interwoven recurring themes by the author: landscapes of banishment, the power of the past infused with the present, the complex transmission of generational inheritances and enclosed spaces –in this case, the “microcosm of the university”– in which the logics of power are amplified.

This sixth novel by Sergio Missana attests the prominent place the author occupies in the panorama of present day narrative.  In it he displays the qualities that earned him that Carlos Fuentes include his previous work, “Parallel Deaths”, in his personal cannon among the best Latin American novels of the twentieth century.