A slender thread connects these two very different books: they both concern the story of a Malayali nun who leaves the convent of her own accord. Amen, however, is an autobiography and is the author's first book; though it was first published in Malayalam, it was originally written in English. Othappu in contrast is a novel by an established author, poet, academic and Sahitya Akademi award winner, originally written in Malayalam. It has been translated into English by the eminent writer Valson Thampu, a priest of the Church of North India and principal of St Stephen's College in New Delhi.
Ordinarily, these differences would have been enough to ensure each book its own separate review. But the thread that connects the two narratives is unusual enough to justify examining them together. It is not merely rare for an Indian nun leave the convent, as both books confirm, it is literally life-threatening to all concerned. The whole family and even the village community to which the individual belongs shares the stigma of what is regarded as a betrayal of faith. In Sarah Joseph's novel the father of one of the main characters commits suicide immediately upon being told that his son has decided to leave the priesthood.
Of the two, Sister Jesme's account in Amen is by far the more astonishing one, because it represents the drab, unvarnished truth. In spare prose and with remarkable economy, she narrates her personal journey from genteel young woman to doughty campaigner for intellectual and personal freedoms. Those of us who have gone to convent schools and colleges will feel an anticipatory thrill in being given a tour of all that was hidden behind those familiar veils. Anyone who picks up this book in search of salacious material will be disappointed, however. This is a sober account, written by an intelligent and intensely passionate woman about the 33 years she spent behind the walls of one of the most powerful institutions the world has known – the Catholic Church, here represented by the order of which she was a part, the Congregation of Mother of Carmel.
Church loyalists who have attacked Sister Jesme for supposedly writing a degrading and sexually explicit account only reveal their own naïveté. It would have been much more difficult to believe her story if she did not refer to at least a few indiscretions of the carnal kind. Indeed, her presentation is almost clinical in its lack of spice, a documentation without frills. Sample this disembodied description: