The Spiral Staircase - by Karen Armstrong (Paperback)

About the Book

The moving story of her own search for God by the highly-acclaimed author of the bestselling "A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam."

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Enjoyable and deeply interesting. . . . Very rewarding." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A story about becoming human, being recognized, finally recognizing oneself. . . . It fills the reader with hope." --The Washington Post Book World

"Riveting. . . . It's a pleasure to read simply because it's honest and hopeful. . . . Armstrong is such an evocative writer." --Newsday

"I loved this powerful and moving account, and read it nonstop." --Elaine Pagels, author of Beyond Belief

"[In] Armstrong's memoir there lurks wisdom about the making and remaking of a life . . . from which all of us could learn." --The New York Times Book Review

"A powerful memoir. . . . Buoyed by keen intelligence and unflinching self-awareness and honesty. . . . Armstrong is an engaging, energetic writer." --The Christian Science Monitor

"Candid and compelling, and the sentences are flawless." --The Dallas Morning News

About the Author

KAREN ARMSTRONG is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs--including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, The Case for God, Islam, Buddha, and The Great Transformation--and two memoirs, Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into forty-five languages. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions; lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department; participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan, and Davos; addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York; is increasingly invited to speak in Muslim countries; and is now an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. In February 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and recently launched with TED a Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion. She lives in London.