A Book Of Silence
Will be published approx. on 3. August 2009
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-84708-151-3 (ISBN)
Description
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 and the Australian bush and on the Isle of Skye. She interweaves these experiences with the history of silence told 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 Scottish moor, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home.
Reviews / Votes
'A Book of Silence grapples with ideas at the very heart of what it is to be human, and Sara Maitland is a joyous champion of the countercultural notion that silence is more than simply an absence of noise' -The Times 'Maitland's experience has been rich and thorough, and deeply enviable. Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it' - Guardian 'It is both an analytical, theoretical fascination and a personal one, her reading and her experience locked together, each testing and illuminating the other' - Economist 'Her dedication to the cause is both inspiring and shocking - There are many beautiful meditative passages in her meditation on silence - [A] wonderful salutary book' - Sunday Telegraph (Seven)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
242 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84708-151-3 (9781847081513)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Previous edition
Granta | Sara Maitland
A Book of Silence
Book
08/2009
Granta Books
€31.13
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Persons
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.