Category:Jonah--fiction (subject)

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Survey of fictional works on Jonah.

Overview

The Christological reinterpretation of the story of Jonah gave to the ancient prophet a prominent status in Christian iconography since the first centuries.

Jonah in popular culture

According to a long-established tradition among sailors, the term "a Jonah" indicates a person (usually, a passenger, not a member of the crew) whose presence on board brings bad luck and endangers the ship. Several fictional works explicitly refer to such a tradition, including the movie Captains Courageous (1937) by Victor Fleming.

"A Jonah" is only a person who has endured suffering and deliverance, like the Jewish child who survived the concentration camp during the Holocaust in the autobiographical novel Kinderjaren (1978) by Jona Oberski, filmed in 1993 by Roberto Faenza under the title Jona che visse nella balena / Jonah who Lived in the Whale.

Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan