The Inquisitor's Diary

Book excerpt: Set in Mexico City in 1649, when the Spanish Inquisition holds sway, TheInquisitor’s Diary takes the form of the diary of Fray Alonso, the most zealous advocate of their mission, as he struggles to win promotion in the church. Outmaneuvered by his rivals, he is dispatched on a seemingly futile journey to the north, where he unexpectedly befriends a captured heretic—a Marrano, or crypto-Jew—and finds himself questioning all he believes in. Thought-provoking and philosophical, this novel brings the Inquisition to troubling life, with all its moral darkness and complexity. “We follow Alonso’s journey as he is dispatched by the Inquisitor General to the country’s northern frontier to root out ‘heresy, apostasy, backsliding.’ . . . This somber work seeks to uncover those subterranean impulses that surge beneath Alonso’s fate.”—Literary Review