Coming from a society where women were barred from serious writing and teaching, Julian, an anchorite of the great medieval city of Norwich, nevertheless uses her womanlines and the English vernacular of the day to describe a series of revelations which she received from God in the year 1373. She identifies the female nature of Christ's suffering and the motherhood of God, using images from domestic daily life, emphasizing the homeliness of God's love. She writes in a lively and unpretenti...

Contains The Cloud of Unknowing, The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, and An Epistle on Prayer. Against a tradition of devotional writings which focussed on knowing God through Christ's Passion and his humanity, these texts describe a transcendent God who exists beyond human knowledge and human language. These four texts are at the heart of medival mystical theology in their call for contemplation, calm, and above all, love, as the way to understand the Divi...

Written towards the end of the second century AD, The Golden Ass tells the story of the many adventures of a young man whose fascination with witchcraft leads him to be transformed into a donkey. The bewitched Lucius passes from owner to owner - encountering a desperate gang of robbers and being forced to perform lewd 'human' tricks on stage - until the Goddess Isis finally breaks the spell and Lucius is initiated into her cult. Apuleius' enchanting story has inspired generations of writer...

The famed Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s two masterworks—The Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova—in one volumeA Penguin ClassicAs a philosopher, he wedded classical methods of inquiry to a Christian faith. As an autobiographer, he looked unsparingly at his own failures to depict universal struggles. As a visionary, he dared draw maps of Hell, with Purgatory and Paradise, and populate all three realms with recognizable human be...

Beowulf is the longest and finest literary work to have come down to us from Anglo-Saxon times, and one of the world's greatest epic poems. Set in the half-legendary, half historical Scandinavian past, it tells the story of the hero Beowulf, who comes to the aid of the Danish king Hrothgar by killing first the terrifying, demonic monster Grendel, and then Grendel's infuriated and vengeful mother. A lifetime later, Beowulf's own kingdom, Geatland, is threatened by a fiery dragon; B...

In this classic text, Thomas Merton offers valuable guidance for prayer. He brings together a wealth of meditative and mystical influences–from John of the Cross to Eastern desert monasticism–to create a spiritual path for today. Most important, he shows how the peace contacted through meditation should not be sought in order to evade the problems of contemporary life, but can instead be directed back out into the world to affect positive change.Contemplative Prayer is one...

This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before the invasion of William the Conqueror. It was a battle that led to his death and marked the end of an era in which Europe had been dominated by the threat of Scandinavian forces. Despite England's triumph, it also played a crucial part in fatally weakening the English army immediately prior to the Norma...

In this new translation the brilliant and impassioned descriptions of Augustine's colourful early life are conveyed to the English reader with accuracy and art. Augustine tells of his wrestlings to master his sexual drive, his rare ascent from a humble Algerian farm to the edge of the corridors of high power at the imperial court of Milan, and his renunciation of secular ambition and marriage as he recovered the faith that his mother had taught him. It was in a Milan garden that Augustine ...

The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it.

Pierre searches for purpose, Andrei for glory and Natasha for love, while Russia moves towards war.Tolstoy’s enthralling epic depicts Russia’s war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict.Moving between St Petersburg, Moscow, country estates and battlefields, War and Peace follows families linked by love, ambition, inheritance and history. At its heart are Pierre Bezukhov, thoughtful and impulsive; Prince Andrei, restles...

A new edition to celebrate the 30th anniversary of David Foster Wallace's iconic, bestselling novel Infinite Jest - with an introduction by Michelle Zauner, author of Crying in H Mart'We will likely not see another book like this in our lifetimes' Michelle Zauner, bestselling author of Crying in H Mart and frontwoman for Japanese BreakfastTennis prodigy Hal Incandenza and recovering addict Don Gately are consume...

The product of over forty Bible scholars and seven years’ work, The NLT Study Bible is the most comprehensive study Bible ever created. The notes focus on bringing out the full meaning of the text, allowing the reader to understand the Bible more deeply than ever. Features include 25,900 study notes (over 820,000 words), maps, charts, illustrations, a word-study system, and much more.Feature details: Ten section introductions provide an overview of the lit...