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The Spiral Staircase

ebook
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The New York Times bestselling author of A History of God delivers the gripping, inspirational story about her own search for God.  
“A story about becoming human, being recognized, finally recognizing oneself…. It fills the reader with hope.” —
The Washington Post Book World

In 1962, at age seventeen, Karen Armstrong entered a convent, eager to meet God. After seven brutally unhappy years as a nun, she left her order to pursue English literature at Oxford. But convent life had profoundly altered her, and coping with the outside world and her expiring faith proved to be excruciating. Her deep solitude and a terrifying illness–diagnosed only years later as epilepsy—marked her forever as an outsider. In her own mind she was a complete failure: as a nun, as an academic, and as a normal woman capable of intimacy. Her future seemed very much in question until she stumbled into comparative theology. What she found, in learning, thinking, and writing about other religions, was the ecstasy and transcendence she had never felt as a nun.

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Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Kindle Book

  • Release date: December 18, 2007

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9780307429391
  • Release date: December 18, 2007

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9780307429391
  • File size: 387 KB
  • Release date: December 18, 2007

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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

Languages

English

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The New York Times bestselling author of A History of God delivers the gripping, inspirational story about her own search for God.  
“A story about becoming human, being recognized, finally recognizing oneself…. It fills the reader with hope.” —
The Washington Post Book World

In 1962, at age seventeen, Karen Armstrong entered a convent, eager to meet God. After seven brutally unhappy years as a nun, she left her order to pursue English literature at Oxford. But convent life had profoundly altered her, and coping with the outside world and her expiring faith proved to be excruciating. Her deep solitude and a terrifying illness–diagnosed only years later as epilepsy—marked her forever as an outsider. In her own mind she was a complete failure: as a nun, as an academic, and as a normal woman capable of intimacy. Her future seemed very much in question until she stumbled into comparative theology. What she found, in learning, thinking, and writing about other religions, was the ecstasy and transcendence she had never felt as a nun.

Expand title description text