Changes

|title=My Name Was Judas

|author=C K Stead

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|pages=256

|publisher=Harvill Secker

|date=November 2006

|isbn=1846550122

}}

I like retellings. There is something intensely satisfying in having another version of an old, known story presented. It must be an echo of the times when each story was retold every time as there was no writing - but of course the modern retelling is usually one with a twist, often subversive, ironic and frequently iconoclastic. Retellings are post-modern by definition, playing with old texts, turning them around, putting them in front of mirrors so they reflect themselves and their interpretations in a never-ending sequence. But retellings are also old, as old as story itself, in their search for the final version, the ultimate, the truth.

It's not the best or most inspiring of Gospel retellings I know: despite all its good qualities it lacks a certain spark that would raise it to the truly great, those that would make you always doubt the original (or any other version); but it's a compelling enough one and at less than 250 pages of beautiful, clear prose certainly worth reading.

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