A Book of Silence
Author(s): Sara Maitland
After a noisy upbringing as one of six children, and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland began to crave silence. Over the past five years, she has spent periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Australian bush, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Her memoir of these experiences is interwoven with the history of silence through fairy-tale and myth, Western and Eastern religious traditions, the Enlightenment and psychoanalysis, up to the ambivalence towards silence in contemporary society. Maitland has built a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home. "A Book of Silence" is a deeply thoughtful, honest and illuminating memoir about a phenomenon too often neglected in the contemporary world.
Product Information
"* "A serious, important and deeply engaging book, describing with equal honesty the risks and the resources of silence. In describing her own exploration of these, Sara Maitland prompts some very uncomfortable questions about the fear, the shallowness and the lack of attentive listening that so effectively keep us prisoners." - Archbishop Rowan Williams * 'A timely and alluring exploration of the pleasures and powers of silence; Maitland writes with the serenity of one who has just returned from a place where I would very much like to go.' - Tim Parks"
Sara Maitland is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the Somerset Maugham Award-winning Daughters of Jerusalem, and several non-fiction books about religion. Born in 1950, she studied at Oxford University and currently tutors on the Distance Learning MA in creative writing for Lancaster University. She lives in Galloway.
General Fields
- :
- : Granta Books
- : Granta Books
- : 01 November 2008
- : 250mm X mm
- : United Kingdom
- : books
Special Fields
- : Sara Maitland
- : Hardback with dustjacket
- : 155.92
- : very good
- : 320
