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I just finished Sister Teresa, a historical novel by Bárbara Mujica, inspired by Teresa of Ávila's autobiography and other writings. The novel is written as a personal testimony by one of Teresa's closest friends. As such, it doesn't show Teresa's interior thoughts as well as her actual writings. The novel does a very good job painting the atmosphere of the period, a time of extreme piety and religious tensions, when the Spanish Inquisition was obsessed with rooting out actual and perceived dissent from the Catholic Church. It was in these times when Teresa of Ávila struggled against the established religious, political and social hierarchies to express controversial ideas of inner spirituality. By the end of the book, I wanted to read it again.
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