Oscar K. and Dorte Karrebæk (ill.)

In the mid-1400s poor man's Bibles were published to help spread the story of the Bible to many of the people who could not read. The author Oscar K., alias Ole Dalgaard has chosen to take up this tradition and use it to embody a framework around a re-telling of the New Testament story of Jesus Christ, but Oscar K. goes a step further, so the communication doesn't only take care of those who are literally poor but in a Christian way, those who are poor in spirit.

The story is built up as a repetition in words and pictures of a theatre troupe's performance of the story of Jesus' life - and as a logical continuation with a group of poor in spirit (politically incorrectly called mentally deficient) as actors.

We follow the building of the stage, distribution of the roles and performance of selected stories from the New Testament and of the central events in Jesus' life in the book's great spread, that partly consists of a tight, narrative text, of stage directions and of source-specific quotes, and partly of an artistic illustrated work that presents a tri-fold stage where the action takes place flanked by four boxes with commentators in animal shapes.

Each spread in this book is striking both in its aesthetic strength and by its unbridled challenge. Just as the travelling theatre troupe has always been able to fascinate and provoke the audience, according to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, this book affects the reader and viewer in the same way in both intellect and feelings. The strength is obtained in a permanent interaction between suffering and humour, in a constant presentation of the conditions of life in all its forms, in a scoop of sources from the past and present and in humility for the ability of the poor in spirit to ask the important questions.

The book tells about the journey of life that is presented in the preface: You come from nothing, you go back to nothing. In between nothing and nothing we meet parts of the process as the four evangelists from each his own director's chair has recounted, but juxtaposed with the thoughts and experiences as expressed by Shakespeare, Bill Clinton, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and many others. The big story and the many thoughts melt together and bring out amazement, laughter and existential questions in the young reader.   

This is the book's eminent capacity: Its provocation sets in precisely where the main protagonist began. And it is looking for the young reader (and the aged) so precisely and so hard and so lovingly, because its approach to the fortunes of life is exactly as open-minded as the protagonist was himself. 

To be affected by this Bible for the poor in spirit can allow everyone who comes from a solid cultural ballast, e.g. through confirmation classes and religious education, to enjoy themselves more than a lack of assumption, but also to re-think what they believe. And readers who have so far managed to avoid our culture's prerequisites will, in this poor man's bible, find enough questions to last for the next many, many years.

It is not every decade that we see a book of this calibre. A book that in the power of words and pictures puts faith and thinking on the agenda. A book that, in the finest way, stands guard on a Nordic tradition for taboo allergies.

Cecilie Eken, Jens Raahauge, Søren Vinterberg.