The novel’s protagonist, the whisky priest initially seems an unlikely hero: An alcoholic priest who has fathered a child, he flees from the law and doubts his own faith. Even before his religion is outlawed, thus making him a fugitive, the whisky priest has indulged in sin—mostly, the sin of pride. In addition, he’s an outsider in his own land; the fact that Mr. Tench refers to him as “the stranger” only highlights his anonymity and foreignness. The whisky priest speaks English because he attended seminary in the US: ”He can pass as a gringo” (22), the chief tells the lieutenant. His itinerant existence, traveling in between cities and villages, always on the run from the law, sets him apart from the other characters. He moves in the liminal spaces between languages, between places, between sinfulness and saintliness.

When Mr. Tench first encounters the whisky priest, he describes his forlorn state: “He had the air, in his hollowness and neglect, of somebody of no account who had been beaten up incidentally, by ill-health or restlessness” (14). Devoid even of a name, the whisky priest has been hollowed out by circumstances, emptied of the pretense that once attended his vocation.