Religious issues tend to be very controversial, and if it concerns the founder of a religion, any depiction that deviates from the well-accepted view can provoke a number of feelings. And so it was with this movie, The Last Temptation of Christ (released in 1988), that sought to depict some events and theories that are not part of accepted Christian lore. For example, if a movie seeks to portray that Christ was not the son of God, or had a relationship with a woman and had a child, or did not die on the Christ, there can be a huge backlash. And so it was with this movie, which remains banned in some Christian dominated countries, and also provoked a backlash that was far more severe than the studio and the director (Martin Scorsese) expected. In recent years, there has been some acceptance of the movie’s portrayal of Jesus as one who confronts all the human weaknesses and overcomes for his vision; the movie sought to explore all the sentiments that would have driver such a person. In the end, the movie did not too well at the box office.
Scorsese had been looking to make a movie on the life of Jesus for many years, and had taken the film rights of the 1960 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, even getting a screenplay for the movie ready by the late 70’s by Paul Schrader, and production was even planned in 1983 with Paramount as the studio. But by late 1983, the project was cancelled by the studio, and then Universal Studio took up the project again in 1986 with photography starting in 1987. The movie was entirely shot in the African country of Morocco.

The movie has many concepts that do not gel with standard Christian philosophy, such as the concept of Jesus making crosses used by the Romans to kill Jewish prisoners by crucifying them, by portraying Judas as a far more complex and positive character (obsessed with ensuring a revolution by the Jews against the Romans rather than the betrayer he is positioned in standard Christian philosophy).
The movie starts out with the internal conflict in Jesus, who realizes that God has some plan for him, but that he is also human. When he starts to make the crosses for the Roman army, he is branded a traitor by Jewish revolutionaries. Judas is sent to kill him, but he waits and watches Jesus’s message about love, and joins his ministry. Jesus starts preaching to people, saving the life of Mary (a prostitute) from a mob. Jesus is still working his way through what his aim in life is, and starts attracting disciples. Satan tries to sway Jesus 3 times, but each time Jesus refuses to get swayed. More events happen in the life of Jesus, but which convince him that the path of violence is not for him. He has asked Judas to get the temple guards to take him away, which happens after the Last Supper.
And then Jesus is put on the cross by the Romans since he is deemed a security to their current rule; and then the most controversial part of the movie. He is convinced by an Angel (actually Satan) that he is not the Son of God, and he should lead a normal life; where he meets Mary, makes love to her and then has a family. In the end, he is found by Judas near his death, who calls him a traitor, and that the angel was actually Satan. Jesus goes back to the cross, and then it is revealed that all this was a dream, and dies on the cross.

Jim Corbett was a famous hunter and conservationist, who was born and lived in the Terai region of the Himalayas. He knew the jungle inside out, and was an expert tracker. He was also much in demand for his hunting, but at some time in his life, he had made a vow to not kill for fun, but kill those animals who hunted humans. He is responsible for killing a number of leopards and tigers who had terrorised humans in the region (many of these animals had killed scores of humans). Jim Corbett is now immortalized with the naming of a famous Tiger Habitat, called the Jim Corbett Tiger National Park (having around 164 tigers) located in the same regions where he lived, and where animals are now protected. Corbett wrote a number of books based on the animals he killed, especially since he also wrote about the habitat, about the reasons as to why an animal turned into a man-eater (because it was unable to hunt its natural prey – old age, wounded in a fight, or injured by a bullet), and also about the society of that time.

This book about the chase of an animal famous as the man-eater of Rudraprayag in the year 1925-26, in which he was accompanied by Commissioner of Kumaon, Sir William Ibbotson. They were tracking an animal that had killed around 125 people, and was an elusive hunt, and was a pretty heavy task; compounded by the fact that the region in which the leopard roamed free was around 1300 square kilometers.
As usual Corbett describes the society around him, the superstitions and faiths of the villagers; something which varied drastically between daytime and night. At night, the terror of the leopard would ensure that people kept inside, scared of the leopard. You also realize the admiration with which Corbett held the nature and environment around him.

Suppose you are in the turbulent time period of the 1960’s – 1970’s when various colonial ruled countries in Africa were reaching their independence. There were many different influences working in the countries at that point of time, the Soviet Union was trying to get regimes to be in its favor. Many of these countries were mineral rich, and there was a fight to get the rulers of the country in favor of companies so that they could get advantages of the mineral rights that were being awarded by these countries. It was not unheard of that a country’s Government could be deposed off in a coup, although using mercenaries was not unheard of. As is normal with Forsyth, his novel is based on a lot of detailed research, enough that people who were in this line of business were astounded by the accuracy of these details.

In fact, there is a lot of buzz that the country that Forsyth refers to as Zangaro was actually the country of Equatorial Guinea; the book is supposed to be atleast partly based upon Forsyth’s time as a reported in the Biafran War between Biafra and Nigeria, and in fact, as a part of researching this story, Forsyth was researching how to attempt a coup against the Government of Equatorial Guinea, and it was supposed to cost a ridiculously small sum of a quarter of a million dollars. There is a lot of speculation that there was an actual coup attempt against the Government that was spoiled by Spain.
The book draws mixed reviews, with many people praising the depth of description of the details; however, there was also criticism that there were too many details or preparation and not enough action. The story is about a British mining tycoon learning of a hot discovery of the priceless metal, platinum, in the Central African republic of Zangaro. However, the ruler is leaning towards the Soviet Union, who in turn decide to give him a KGB guard and also send in their own survey team. At the same time, the British tycoon Sir James Manson hires a mercenary, Carlo Alfred Thomas “Cat” Shannon, who had left Zangaro earlier after the side he was supporting failed. They decide to plan an operation in which they will kill the current leader, Jean Kimba, and replace him with their own man. The rest of the story is about the execution of the plan, and how it meets with its challenges.

After the Second World War, there was a quest to hunt for the Nazis to bring them to justice, and yet, a number of them were never caught. Some of them escaped to various countries in South America, others were co-opted by both the Western and Communist countries and some of them tried to stay underground in Germany itself. There has always been the belief that there was an organization called ODESSA (Wikipedia link) that sought to provide an environment in which former SS (the most feared and devoted Nazi) members would be supported and provided escape routes, and such an organization would seem logical as the war was ending, and former SS members knew that they would be persecuted by both the Soviet and Western forces. No less a Nazi hunter than Simon Wiesenthal believed that such an organization existed and accounted for how SS members managed to escape the manhunt.

Frederick Forsyth normally researches his novels in great detail, and you can see the results in this novel itself. The novel details the way in which ODESSA works, and how a reporter manages to get involved with the network. The story is set in 1963, and deals with Peter Miller, a freelance crime reporter who reaches the apartment of a suicide victim – the suicide is that of Salomon Tauber, a Jewish Holocaust-survivor from the Riga concentration camp, which was commanded by Eduard Roschmann, also known as “The Butcher of Riga” (wikipedia). He soon obtains a diary, which records that Tauber had witnessed Roschmann shooting a German Army captain.
After finding that there is not much resolve to convict ex-Nazis, he is approached by former concentration camp survivors and soon, he is determined to get into the ODESSA. After some training, he manages to get inside after meeting a lawyer who works for ODESSA. He slowly starts getting information on the entire system, but a chance mistake means that he is revealed, and now there is a hitman after him. It is now a quest to get away from the hitman while trying to get Roschmann. Will he succeed ?