OF GODS, HUMANS AND BEASTS

A collection offers religious short stories with unconventional elements.

“This is a true story,” Wishman writes at one point in his work. “It is not nice to tell true stories about dead men, I know. With gods and godmen, it is different.” This twofold tone—of straight-faced reserve and a certain no-holds-barred approach—runs throughout the book, which is a mixture of tales revolving around various religious themes. A Hindu man is mistaken for a Christian in “How Jesus Saved Mrs. Frankson,” for instance. And in “How Supreme Court Played Spoil-sport,” a Hindu man named Krishan Sharma is urged to convert to Christianity in stark, fundamentalist terms: “Believe me, Mr. Sharma, this is the time for you to accept Him. He mounted the cross to save you. Don’t you see the signs?” These modern-day stories are counterbalanced with tales drawn from various religious texts and rewritten in a decidedly contemporary idiom. One of these stories, for instance, is the Old Testament tale of King David and Absalom and Ahitophel. “Weeping like a coward,” David fled to Mount of Olives, “making arrangements for spies to be stationed in Absalom’s house,” the author writes. “God was indeed tantalized, but had not forgotten the dirty trick He had reserved for David.” This note of wry irreverence is most prominently on display in “Sweet Balls for a Man-God,” which touches on the famous religious figure Sathya Sai Baba. But that tone is omnipresent in the text and the footnotes that often accompany the tales. Wishman is a smoothly talented storyteller with a sharp eye for the hypocrisies and absurdities that so often accompany even the most devotional tales. Devoutly religious readers may feel a low simmer of outrage as the pages turn. But those who have ever been disillusioned by their own faiths or the beliefs of others will be eagerly reading these stories.

In these entertaining tales, “gods and godmen” come in for some serious ribbing.