Enslaved, shackled to another man named Sahak, and condemned to work in the notoriously life-shortening and infernal copper mines of Ancient Rome, Barabbas has an extraordinary crisis of faith, the exact nature of which is elucidated in the final portion of the novel.

Barabbas's ultimate loyalties lie with the opaque, remorseless void that fed and surrounded his former life, manifested in the darkness of the night of his execution, which he surrenders himself to with his final breath.

The French critic Marcel Brion wrote in Le Monde on 7 December 1950: “The unprecedented human value and universal importance of this book cannot possibly be doubted”.

A few months later, another critic in the same publication also praised the novel, saying "We are rarely brought face-to-face with a work of such depth and brilliance as this”.

[1] The novel provoked a discussion among Swedish critics about religious matters, such as belief, doubt and the question of suffering in Christianity.