Welcome to Thursday and today’s featured book is ‘The Judas Inheritance.’ Regular readers of the Symi Dream blog will already know something about this book, but there us some background to it that you may not be aware of. It started with a look in the desk drawer for inspiration…
Looking around to see what I had available here that could be used in a story I opened my desk drawer and saw a coin. My grandfather found this coin when he was in Palestine during the Second World War, where he was Naval Chaplain with responsibility for parts of North Africa and the Middle East. The coin dates from around 2,000 years ago and shows the Athenian Owl and a head in prolife. It could be from as early as 400 B.C.
Ancient coin, Palestine, Greek coins traveling there and back, silver pieces… Connections were made and, as often happens, a great big ‘What if?’ presented itself. What if the 30 pieces of silver used by Judas to betray Christ found their way along trade routes to Symi, bringing with them a curse of betrayal?
And that’s how the story started.
As anyone who has read my ‘Jason and the Sargonauts’ will know, I am rather fond of using local ‘clues’, tying them into a story to bring an air of possibility to the proceedings. Here there were several clues ready and waiting: Symi has been occupied by the Romans, Venetians, the Knights of St John, the Ottomans, Italians, Germans, British and finally Greeks. All, apart from Greece, have risen to fail. Why? What if each downturn in fortune happened at the same time these cursed coins were found, greedily used and brought to life again? When would the last time have been? Around 1912 when the Italian occupation, over fishing of sponges, World Wars and increases in taxes led to a mass migration from the island dropping the population from an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 to just a few hundred.
Just around the corner from my house is a square with a kafeneion opened in 1909, when the island was at the height of its prosperity and just before the great decline. What if the owner was able to build that new kafeneion because he had come into the possession of the cursed coins?
There is also an up to date tie-in which I felt was needed and poignant. In recent years, due to the economic downturn in the country, the suicide rate in Greece has increased. There has a curse on the country; the curse of bad government you might say. What if that curse was actually the curse of the Judas coins? I wondered, how would 30 pieces of cursed silver affect everyday folk? And the simple answer was suicide, the way they had affected Judas. This suggested to me that the coins were cursed even before Judas came into possession of them. (On this score, see the end of the book for a final twist that didn’t make it to the film.)
I could go on, but I know you have other things to do. As I write, the film version of ‘The Judas Inheritance’, titled by me as ‘The Judas Curse’ is still in post-production. From what I have seen of the rough edit it looks great. As happens in films, other people were involved in the project and a lot of the book story was changed to the extent that what I feel are the main elements of the story are missing – the modern day tie in, the clues, the history of the island, the progress of the curse and even, to a certain extent, the coins! But that’s how things go and I am sure – I hope – we will all see something in film form based on my novel at some point in the future.
“Brilliant storyline. It hooked me from the first page and I didn’t put it down until I finished and then only reluctantly. It had everything the more traditional thriller should; mystery, intrigue, heart stopping moments, even the odd tear at the sadness of it all.” Amazon review
You can order copies of ‘The Judas Inheritance’ here.
The photos are from the filming of ‘The Judas Cures’ and all are by Neil Gosling © all rights reserved
