In March 2003 Australian forces joined the American-led invasion of Iraq, later called “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” At the time of writing, late 2007, these troops remain in occupation of the country which has experienced not the celebratory peace which was promised by that invasion, but horrific violence. Meanwhile, in Australia, the war itself has tended to drop out of sight of the mainstream media: in the context of a federal election, no politician who urged Australian participation in the invasion and occupation has been held accountable for their views. The ‘freedoms’ promised in Australia and to Australians are not the political ones ostensibly promised to the people of Iraq, but are largely economic: principally, the freedom to enjoy prosperity. Increasingly, it seems, political rights are being traded off against the ‘right’ to enjoy a society which understands ‘freedom’ in terms of market choice; this view is now reshaping the values of teaching and research at Australian universities. This paper reads the forms of freedom interrogated, dismissed or valorised in the least-read novel of Christos Tsiolkas, The Jesus Man, in the context of old and new debates about the relationship of political economy to practices of reading and teaching. It argues that The Jesus Man asks important questions about the relationship of economic structures to personal and political values, and, drawing on modern Greek and Australian history, asks, what are viable forms of political protest, and how might they be written/narrated?