It was during the epistemological craziness around the year 2000 that I christened myself a truth warrior. I was already a scientist. Yet I knew there were other important truths, not of the mind but of the heart, truths we discover and marvel over in the realm of art. So as a biology professor I was granted a sabbatical to write the second of three of my novels, about Pliny the Elder. It is through literature, some of my own making, that I find new ways of seeing and experiencing the world: and of discovering and validating what is true, and what is not.
Walk along with two strong women as they make their way through the wilderness of Poland’s Reformation. Join Queen Bona Sforza, who as a child was a friend of Leonardo da Vinci, as she struggles to find her place in Krakow’s Wawel Castle and its many political intrigues. Hold the sixty-year-old widow Kasia Weiglowa’s hand, navigating her own journey, not of political power but of spiritual compassion and understanding.
Living almost a stone’s throw from each other they inhabit two different worlds. Until that, is the question of how to treat the country’s Jewish people sets their worlds onto a collision course.
Though I did enjoy the earlier Wolf Hall I found Bring Up the Bodies more readable and compelling.
Hilary Mantel paints intimate word pictures of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and especially Thomas Cromwell, struggling to make his way through the minefield of political intrigue at Henry’s court. Though it is against almost every principle he holds dear, Cromwell charts a course which one step at a time ultimately brings Anne Boleyn down.
Finding himself in an almost impossible situation, he agonizes over every decision, looking at it from many sides: legal, political, ethical, spiritual, and religious. Meanwhile not far in the background we see the Church’s Pope Clement trying desperately, like Oz’s man behind the curtain, to control events.
Mantel’s genius was her ability to transform dry history into compelling, character-driven stories.
The second book in Hilary Mantel's award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, with a stunning new cover design to celebrate the publication of the much anticipated The Mirror and the Light
An astounding literary accomplishment, Bring Up the Bodies is the story of this most terrifying moment of history, by one of our greatest living novelists.
'Our most brilliant English writer' Guardian
Bring Up the Bodies unlocks the darkly glittering court of Henry VIII, where Thomas Cromwell is now chief minister. With Henry captivated by plain Jane Seymour and rumours of Anne Boleyn's faithlessness whispered by…
It’s hard for me to imagine myself in Sister of the Cross’ place, overcome with spiritual experiences so intense they are almost unbearable.
Like Saint Teresa of Avila’s ecstasies or experiences under the influence of psychedelic drugs, ordinary language cannot describe her journeys outside the normative experience of her spiritual sisters. They are, to herself and her community, barely believable.
In the end she faces an unbearable choice: to allow herself to collapse into that other, wonderful world, or be “cured.”
Mark Salzman's Lying Awake is a finely wrought gem that plumbs the depths of one woman's soul, and in so doing raises salient questions about the power-and price-of faith.
Sister John's cloistered life of peace and prayer has been electrified by ever more frequent visions of God's radiance, leading her toward a deep religious ecstasy. Her life and writings have become examples of devotion. Yet her visions are accompanied by shattering headaches that compel Sister John to seek medical help. When her doctor tells her an illness may be responsible for her gift, Sister John faces a wrenching choice: to…
In my golden years I’ve come, perhaps wrongly, to trust myself and the decisions I make. Still I sometimes agonize over decisions which like a great clapper sound the bell at the core of my ethical self.
Nearly as handwringing are choices I’m forced into through something new I’ve learned about myself, my friends, or the world around me. Something new that shakes the ground of my understanding so violently I have to stop what I’m doing and hold on.
This is what happens in The Sparrow, as at last we – as someday we surely will – communicate with other life from outside the earth. Salzman cleverly puts much of the action into the hands of the Jesuits. Imagine how they must feel when the Bible, their tradition, and almost everything they believe go out the door…
'The Sparrow is one of my favourite science fiction novels and it destroyed me in the best way when I read it. It is so beautifully written and the construction of the narrative is masterful.' Emma Newman, acclaimed author of Planetfall
Set in the 21st century - a number of decades from now - The Sparrow is the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and talented linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who - in response to a remarkable radio signal from the depths of space - leads a scientific mission to make first contact with an extraterrestrial culture.
Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and even Neolithic burials tell those of us living in the 21st century that a large and undeniable part of being human is taken up with asking the question:
What lies behind our visible, ordinary lives? If we could lift the veil, what would we find behind it? It is a question that follows me around like a hungry kitten, demanding attention, even though I have “better” things to do.
I found myself wrapped in the personality of Lagerkvist’s Mendicant Jew, struggling with choices he has made, as he sets out on a long, difficult pilgrimage to quell his own spiritual hunger. The answers the Sibyl gives him are equally amazing as they are confounding.
"A parable, rather than a novel in the ordinary sense of the term, The Sibyl is . . . a work of manifold meanings and unmistakable profundity, one that can neither be easily understood nor easily forgotten." —Granville Hicks, The New Leader
I grew up in a time (1950’s) and place (rural northern Wisconsin) when there was only one television channel—available only in good weather—no internet, and a library not much bigger than an Amtrak roomette.
It was a childhood full of wonder, but with very short horizons. I can’t say I actually read every book in our town’s library, but I came close. Books were my magic carpet to times and places and, more importantly, frames of reference well outside the box I lived in.
How was it that among its several hundred volumes was The Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda? I did not discover Bruno Schulz, a Polish author murdered by the Nazis in 1943, until many years later. But having traveled far and experienced much, I was just as shocked when I walked through the door into Schulz’s world in a small Polish town, as though I was once again a pre-teen, naive but curious.
Once again I was seeing everything as though for the first time, reflected in a house of mirrors. There are not many books I can say that about.
The collected fiction of "one of the most original imaginations in modern Europe" (Cynthia Ozick)
Bruno Schulz's untimely death at the hands of a Nazi stands as one of the great losses to modern literature. During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership. This volume brings together his complete fiction, including three short stories and his final surviving work, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Illustrated with Schulz's original drawings, this edition beautifully showcases the distinctive surrealist vision of one of the twentieth century's most gifted…
When Miranda’s fiancé, Russ, is being vetted for his dream job in the U.S. attorney’s office, the couple joke that Miranda’s parents’ history as antiwar activists in the Sixties might jeopardize Russ’s security clearance. In fact, the real threat emerges when Russ’s future employer discovers that Miranda was arrested for felony kidnapping seven years earlier—an arrest she’d never bothered to tell Russ about.
Miranda tries to explain that she was only helping her best friend, in the midst of a nasty custody battle, take her daughter to visit her parents in Israel. As Miranda struggles to prove that she’s not a criminal, she stumbles into other secrets that will challenge what she thought she knew about her own family, her friend, Russ—and herself.
When Miranda’s fiancé, Russ, is being vetted for his dream job in the U.S. attorney’s office, the couple joke that Miranda’s parents’ history as antiwar activists in the Sixties might jeopardize Russ’s security clearance. In fact, the real threat emerges when Russ’s future employer discovers that Miranda was arrested for felony kidnapping seven years earlier—an arrest she’d never bothered to tell Russ about.
Miranda tries to explain that she was only helping her best friend, in the midst of a nasty custody battle, take her daughter to visit her parents in Israel. As Miranda struggles to prove that she’s not…
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