He meant it as a piece of religious satire, a playful look at the life of Jesus. But Gerhard Haderer's depiction of Christ as a binge-drinking friend of Jimi Hendrix and naked surfer high on cannabis has caused a furore that could potentially land the cartoonist in jail.

Haderer did not even know that his book, The Life of Jesus, had been published in Greece until he received a summons to appear in court in Athens in January charged with blasphemy.

Crazy, because in the first place, jailed for Blasphemy??

But okay, presumably countries are allowed to make their own laws, and they don't have to make sense, really, you just have to abide by them, assuming you live or work there, I guess.

But to think that you could do something such as write a book, in your own country, and be subject to arrest in another country because of it, is just ludicrous. I'm not judging the merits of the book, because I haven't seen it, but certainly cartoonists do push the envelope of taste and propriety every day. Do writers now need to worry because everything they write is subject to government approval everywhere in the world? Sounds like the stuff of science fiction.