The Story of the Predestined Pilgrim and His Brother Reprobate,translated by Christopher C. Lund

This is an English translation of a salvation allegory written in the hinterland of Brazil in 1682 by the Jesuit Father Alexandre de Gusmão.

Generally, it served the pedagogical purposes of his order, being translated twice into Spanish (1696 and 1815), and specifically for use in his mission boarding school in Belém da Cachoeira. Its narrative follows the evolution of the two protagonists, Predestined and Reprobate, as they travel from Egypt toward the New Jerusalem. It examines the vicissitudes of their encounters with the personifications of virtues and vices.

It culminates, perhaps, with the mystical benevolence of Charity.

Long regarded as an obscure masterpiece, the translator Christopher C. Lund has made a huge contribution to bringing the novel out of obscurity.

Besides a superb example of aesthetic baroque, The Story of the Predestined Pilgrim and his Brother Reprobate is also an impressive display of the tightly woven theological worldview that framed the Catholic world of Counter-Reformation. One needs to experience a reading of this calibre to fully grasp what that world was like, wrote Onésimo T. Almeida from Brown University.