The Devil's Advocate (Morris West novel)

The Devil's Advocate

First UK edition, third pressing
Author	Morris West
Country	Australia
Language	English
Publisher	William Morrow, USA
Publication date	1959
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	319 pp
ISBN	0-671-81252-1 (1971 edition)
Preceded by	Backlash
Followed by	The Naked Country

The Devil's Advocate is a 1959 novel by Australian author Morris West.^[1] It forms part of West's "Vatican" sequence of novels, along with The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963), The Clowns of God (1981), and Lazarus (1990).^[2]

Plot

Father Blaise Meredith, a dying English priest, is sent from the Vatican to a small village in Calabria to investigate the life of Giacomo Nerone, a local being touted for sainthood. Meredith was chosen for the task because Cardinal Marotta wanted someone learned and meticulous; someone who might be lacking in charity, but not in precision’. The residents of the nearby village of Gemello Maggiore are promoting Nerone's cult because it will bring prestige to the area.

Meredith discovers that Nerone was in fact a deserter from the British army, who had an illegitimate son by a local woman, and was executed by Communist partisans towards the end of World War II, yet is a man revered in his small village.

Development

Fluent in both French and Italian, West visited southern Italy in the 1950s, where he wrote the 1957 non-fiction Children of the Sun, which described the lives of street urchins in Naples. As a result, he was offered a job as Vatican correspondent for the London Daily Mail.^[3]

Awards and nominations

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 1959: winner
• W. H. Heinemann Award^[4]
• nominated for the 1960 National Book Award.

Reception

Commonweal called it as “[a] superior novel, intricately worked out at several levels of human and spiritual quest...” The New York Times described it as “[a] reading experience of real emotional intensity.”^[5] Some reviewers compared him favorably with Graham Greene.^[3]

"Never a subtle writer, West makes his approach to timeless truths (and truisms) at a strictly popular level, includes some sex and much emotion, but has his elements of enigma and drama well in hand." (Kirkus Reviews)^[6]

In spite of a style which is more frequently deft than distinguished, The Devil's Advocate is a work of merit...As a novel it is a curious blend of slickness and profundity. It is almost as if a very good and mediocre novel had been stitched together with a jagged line to make one book....This book is well worth reading for its virtues and we have its faults to thank for its being read widely. Flannery O'Connor^[7]

In its first two years, The Devil's Advocate sold 3 million copies. It was staged on Broadway by Dory Schary.^[3] The Devil's Advocate is part of the "Loyola Classics" series of Loyola Press, which includes Miles Connolly's Mr. Blue and Rumer Goddens' In this House of Brede.^[8]

Notes

• Dedication: For Paul R. Reynolds.
• Epigraph: "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held." - Apocalypse vi. 9.

Film adaptation

A film adaptation of this novel was produced as a West German release in 1977, and originally titled Des Teufels Advokat. The film was directed by Guy Green, from a screenplay written by Morris West. The film features John Mills, Leigh Lawson, Jason Miller, Daniel Massey, Paola Pitagora and Stéphane Audran.

References