In this award-winning collection, the bestselling author of Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. Whether rescuing "Calvinism" and its creator Jean Cauvin from the repressive "puritan" stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by Midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between the Bible and Darwinism, Marilynne Robinson repeatedly sends her reader back to the primary texts that are central to the development of American culture but little read or acknowledged today. A passionate and provocative celebration of ideas, the old arts of civilization, and life's mystery, The Death of Adam is, in the words of Robert D. Richardson, Jr., "a grand, sweeping, blazing, brilliant, life-changing book.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMESE NOTABLE BOOK • WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “[Robinson's] prose is our flight out, a keen instrument of vision and transcendence.” —O, the Oprah Magazine Hailed as "incandescent," "magnificent," and "a literary miracle" (Entertainment Weekly), hundreds of thousands of readers were enthralled by Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Now Robinson returns with a brilliantly imagined retelling of the prodigal son parable, set at the same moment and in the same Iowa town as Gilead. A luminous and healing book about families, family secrets, and faith from one of America's most beloved and acclaimed authors. The Reverend Boughton's hell-raising son, Jack, has come home after twenty years away. Artful and devious in his youth, now an alcoholic carrying two decades worth of secrets, he is perpetually at odds with his traditionalist father, though he remains his most beloved child. As Jack tries to make peace with his father, he begins to forge an intense bond with his sister Glory, herself returning home with a broken heart and turbulent past. Home is a luminous and healing book about families, family secrets, and faith from one of America's most beloved and acclaimed authors.
A hymn of praise and lamentation from a 1950s preacher man. Atestament to the sacred bonds between fathers and sons. A psalm of celebrationand acceptance of the best and the worst that the world has to offer. This isthe story of generations, as told through a family history written by ReverendJohn Ames, a legacy for the young son he will never see grow up. As John recordsthe tale of the rift between his own father and grandfather, he also struggleswith the return to his small town of a friend’s prodigal son in search offorgiveness and redemption. The winner of two major literary awards and a New York Times Top10 Book of 2004, Gilead is an exquisitely written work of literaryfiction, destined to become a classic, by one of today’s finest writers.
Marilynne Robinson has built a sterling reputation as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, not only as a major American novelist, but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In When I Was a Child I Read Books she returns to and expands upon the themes which have preoccupied her work with renewed vigor. In "Austerity as Ideology," she tackles the global debt crisis, and the charged political and social political climate in this country that makes finding a solution to our financial troubles so challenging. In "Open Thy Hand Wide" she searches out the deeply embedded role of generosity in Christian faith. And in "When I Was a Child," one of her most personal essays to date, an account of her childhood in Idaho becomes an exploration of individualism and the myth of the American West. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of our essential writers.
In 1956, toward the end of his life, Reverend John Ames begins a letter to his young son, sharing the story of his life and explaining how his faith influenced his choices and actions.
A New York Times bestseller Named a Best Book of 2020 by the Australian Book Review, AV Club, Books-a-Million, Electric Literature, Esquire, the Financial Times, Good Housekeeping (UK), The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Literary Hub, the New Statesman, the New York Public Library, NPR, the Star Tribune, and TIME Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest novel in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction Marilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa—the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack—and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. Jack is Robinson’s fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now. Robinson’s Gilead novels, which have won one Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Critics Circle Awards, are a vital contribution to contemporary American literature and a revelation of our national character and humanity.
The story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience."--
The spirit of our times can appear to be one of joyless urgency. As a culture we have become less interested in the exploration of the glorious mind, and more interested in creating technologies for material well-being. But while cultural pessimism is always fashionable, there is still much to give us hope. In The Givenness of Things, Marilynne Robinson delivers an impassioned critique of our contemporary society while arguing that reverence must be given to who we are and what we are: creatures of singular interest and value, despite our errors and depredations. Robinson has plumbed the depths of the human spirit in her award-winning novels, and in her new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern predicament and the mysteries of faith. These seventeen essays examine the ideas that have inspired and provoked one of our finest writers throughout her life. Whether she is investigating how the work of the great thinkers of the past--Calvin, Locke, Bonhoeffer, and Shakespeare--can infuse our lives, or calling attention to the rise of the self-declared élite in American religious and political life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on display. Exquisite and bold, this is a call for us to find wisdom and guidance in our cultural heritage, and to offer grace to one another.--Adapted from book jacket.
New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes, by the Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.”
In this ambitious book, acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson applies her astute intellect to some of the most vexing topics in the history of human thought—science, religion, and consciousness. Crafted with the same care and insight as her award-winning novels, Absence of Mind challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science. In Robinson’s view, scientific reasoning does not denote a sense of logical infallibility, as thinkers like Richard Dawkins might suggest. Instead, in its purest form, science represents a search for answers. It engages the problem of knowledge, an aspect of the mystery of consciousness, rather than providing a simple and final model of reality.By defending the importance of individual reflection, Robinson celebrates the power and variety of human consciousness in the tradition of William James. She explores the nature of subjectivity and considers the culture in which Sigmund Freud was situated and its influence on his model of self and civilization. Through keen interpretations of language, emotion, science, and poetry, Absence of Mind restores human consciousness to its central place in the religion-science debate.
THIS HIGHLY ACCLAIMED and award-winning novel is the story of two orphans: Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, growing up haphazardly under the care of various bumbling relatives. The two girls finally end up in a small town nestled next to a glacial lake in Idaho, under the guardianship of Sylvie, their odd and rather remote aunt. Ruth's and Lucille's struggle to define themselves as women beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous undertow of transience. Written in Robinson's vibrantly poetic prose, Housekeeping reaches the orphan in all of us and transforms everyday life into a sacred experience. PRAISE FOR HOUSEKEEPING "Brilliantly portrays the impermanence of all things, especially beauty and happiness." Time "So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield."The New York Times Book Review "Extraordinary.... Marilynne Robinson uses language so exquisitely.... Every sentence [is]made just right.... Housekeeping proves that fine fiction is still being written." The Washington Post Book World "I found myself reading slowly, then more slowly--this is not a novel to be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight." Doris Lessing
A brilliant and dramatic close reading of the first book of the Bible focussing on the complex relationship with humankind For generations, the Book of Genesis, included in its entirety here, has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative. In other words, academic interpretation of Genesis has centered on the question of its basic coherence, just as fundamentalist interpretation has centered on the question of the appropriateness of reading it as literally true. Marilynne Robinson's approach is different. Hers is one of an appreciation of Genesis for its greatness as literature, for its rich articulation and exploration of themes that resonate through the whole of Scripture. She illuminates the importance of the stories of, among others, Adam and Eve; Noah and his ark; the rivalry of Cain and Able; and the father and son drama of Abraham and Isaac, to consider the profound meanings and promise of God's enduring covenant with humankind. Her magisterial book radiates gratitude for the constancy and benevolence of God's abiding faith in Creation.
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series—Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack—is an intergenerational story about faith, race, and love radiating out from the interwoven histories of two families in a small Iowa town to encompass all of American life: our ideals and beliefs, our contradictions, failings, and hopes. Over the past sixteen years, Marilynne Robinson’s now-mythical world of Gilead, Iowa, and the beloved characters who inhabit it, have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. These four novels, which have won one Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Critics Circle Awards, among many other honors, are a vital contribution to contemporary American literature and a revelation of our national character and humanity. Robinson’s meditation on the paradoxes of American life has given us “something we only occasionally find in the vastness of existence: a glimpse of eternity” (Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal).
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER Marilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead with the unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe and wonder Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church—the only available shelter from the rain—and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood of itinerant work. Together they crafted a life on the run, existing hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, the times they shared were laced with joy. After Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to harmonize the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with her husband's gentle Christian worldview, which paradoxically judges those she loves. Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Gilead and and Orange Prize–winning Home, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become a classic.
In this powerful, eloquent, and elucidating essay, Marilynne Robinson has pinpointed exactly the motives and the mythology and the reality behind the destruction of our planet. The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Great Britain is a perfect metaphor for twentieth-century genocide. Not the small, insane eruptions of eradication that took place in Hitler's Germany, but rather that routine, day-to-day, thoroughly "democratic" envenomation of the planet by a current industrial magic (encouraged, or at least condoned, by almost everybody), which threatens to terminate everything on earth in the quite foreseeable future.Robinson's book is as powerful a contribution to the literature of revelation and protest as was that seminal photographic essay by W. Eugene and Aileen Smith on Minamata's disease fifteen years ago. It is as bloodcurdling as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, as thought-provoking and prophetic as the best works of people like Barry Commoner and Loren Eiseley.This is a work ofgreat intelligence and fine investigative reporting. It is also a lucid interpretation of history, and very important in its discussions of the roots of current dilemmas. And lastly, Mother Country is courageous, and marvelous literature at its best.
Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.
Since 1984, Literary Arts has welcomed many of the world's most renowned authors and storytellers to its stage. In celebration of their thirty-year anniversary, Tin House Books has collected highlights from the series in a single volume. Since 1984, Literary Arts has welcomed many of the world’s most renowned authors and storytellers to its stage for one of the country’s largest lectures series. Sold-out crowds congregate at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall to hear these writers’ discuss their work and their thoughts on the trajectory of contemporary literature and culture. In celebration of Literary Arts’ thirty-year anniversary, Tin House Books has collected highlights from the series in a single volume. Whether it’s Wallace Stegner exploring how we use fiction to make sense of life or Ursula K. Le Guin on where ideas come from, Margaret Atwood on the need for complex female characters or Robert Stone on morality and truth in literature, Edward P. Jones on the role of imagination in historical novels or Marilynne Robinson on the nature of beauty, these essays illuminate not just the world of letters but the world at large.
At the time when Robinson wrote this book, the largest known source of radioactive contamination of the world's environment was a government-owned nuclear plant called Sellafield, not far from Wordsworth's cottage in the Lakes District; one child in sixty was dying from leukemia in the village closest to the plant. The central question of this eloquently impassioned book is: How can a country that we persist in calling a welfare state consciously risk the lives of its people for profit. Mother Country is a 1989 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.
Marilynne Robinson ist eine der großen Stimmen Amerikas. Die mit dem Pulitzer Prize ausgezeichnete Autorin stellt in ihrem neuen Roman »Jack« unnachahmlich die schwierige Balance von Liebe und Vergebung, den Auswirkungen von Rassismus und Verrat vor - ein hochaktuelles Thema in einem leuchtenden Zeitkristall. Jack ist der verlorene Sohn einer weißen Familie. Sein Vater ist Priester, aber er ein obdachloser Herumtreiber und charmanter Vortänzer in schäbigen Dancehalls. Ihn bindet eine zärtlich tragische Beziehung an Della, einer Schwarzen Lehrerin – ein Tabubruch in den USA der fünfziger Jahre, der ihr Leben aus den Angeln hebt. Roman für Roman folgt Marilynne Robinson in ihrer Tetralogie den verzweigten Lebensläufen der Menschen in Gilead, einer kleinen Stadt im Mittleren Westen. Wie in einem Brennglas erfasst sie auf subtile und stille Art die Geschichte Amerikas. »Alles, was Du verlierst, schreibt Robinson, gibt dir die Sehnsucht wieder, und auf diese eigensinnige, stille Weise gestaltet sie eine schöne und geheimnisvolle Welt.« Judith Hermann, Literaturspiegel, über »Lila« »Die Welt könnte mehr solcher Bücher gebrauchen.« Kathryn Schwille, The Atlanta Journal
Eine der bedeutendsten Schriftstellerinnen der USA - endlich in deutscher Übersetzung Unbestritten gilt Marilynne Robinson als eine der größten Schriftstellerinnen ihres Landes. Ihre Bücher gelten als Klassiker, deren Helden unvergesslich und deren Empathie eine Tiefe erreichen, die wie aus der Welt gefallen scheint. Lila ist ein Findelkind, das von einer Landstreicherin und Überlebenskünstlerin aufgegriffen wird. Als ungleiche Geschwister ziehen sie durch Amerikas harte Jahre, als Dürre und Hunger das Leben zeichnen. Bis eines Tages Lila im Regen unerwartet ein Dach über dem Kopf findet. Und mehr als das - nach Jahren der Entbehrung wird sie mit der Sorge und Zartheit eines Mannes konfrontiert, der ihr Leben und alles, was sie bisher erfahren hat, auf den Kopf stellen wird.
›Gilead‹ ist das erste Buch der großartigen Romanserie von der amerikanischen Meistererzählerin Marilynne Robinson und längst ein Klassiker der amerikanischen Literatur. Wie das Licht über der Prärie den Blick in die Weite lenkt und die Nähe umso bedeutender erscheinen lässt, verleiht sie dem Leben eine ungeahnte Perspektive. Auf seinem Sterbebett schreibt John Ames einen Brief an seinen siebenjährigen Sohn. Dem Kind will er alles erklären: Die Einsicht, mit der man das eigene Leben auf einen Schlag begreift, den Trost, der in einer einzelnen Berührung liegen kann, und den Ort, der sein Ende beschließt: Gilead, die kleine Stadt unter dem unermesslichen Himmel des Mittleren Westens, leicht wie Staub und so schwer wie die Welt. Seit Generationen lebte seine Familie in Gilead, waren die Männer Pastoren. Der Großvater half schwarzen Sklaven in die Freiheit, der Vater versuchte das Leben der Menschen in der Dürrekatastrophe erträglich zu machen. Sie lebten eng verwoben mit den Menschen und waren getrieben von einer unerbittlichen Sehnsucht nach Versöhnung. Mit visionärer Kraft und sprachlicher Eindringlichkeit erzählt Marilynne Robinson von der Ungeheuerlichkeit des Lebens, das wir erst in der Rückschau begreifen. Und wie John Ames fühlen wir uns im Blitz dieser Einsicht weniger allein. Dieser Trost macht ihre Bücher so einzigartig. »Gefühlvoll, ergreifend, fesselnd – Robinson gelingt es, das Wunder der Existenz zu fassen.« Merle Rubin, L. A. Times Book Review »Doch am Ende steht das Glück und die Rettung, und man begreift – auch so könnte eine Geschichte wirklich enden.« Zsuzsa Bánk »Was für ein Geschenk: Marilynne Robinsons Texte üben eine magische Wirkung aus.« Carolin Emcke »Ich liebe ihre Bücher.« Barack Obama
As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable secrets about the family of preachers. 75,000 first printing.
O reverendo John Ames, já passado dos 70 anos de idade e sabendo que lhe sobra pouco tempo de vida, decide deixar para seu filho, que ainda está para fazer 7 anos, o relato de sua vida por escrito. Ao narrar os acontecimentos, o reverendo rememora também as vidas de seu pai e seu avô, igualmente religiosos.
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