Showing results by author "Marilynne Robinson" in All Categories

Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alexis de Tocqueville, inform our political consciousness or discussing how beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.

The spirit of our times can appear to be one of joyless urgency. As a culture we have become less interested in the exploration of the glorious mind, and more interested in creating and mastering technologies that will yield material well-being. But while cultural pessimism is always fashionable, there is still much to give us hope.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD “Quietly powerful [and] moving.” O, The Oprah Magazine (recommended reading)...

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A New York Times Bestseller A New York Magazine Best Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year Pulitzer Prize–Winning Author of Gilead Marilynne Robinson has built a sterling reputation as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, not only...

Glory Boughton, aged 38, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack - the prodigal son of the family, gone for 20 years - comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative. In other words, academic interpretation of Genesis has centered on the question of its basic coherency, just as fundamentalist interpretation has centered on the question of the appropriateness of reading it as literally true.

Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church - the only available shelter from the rain - and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood.

"[Narrator Therese] Plummer's talented performance is both illuminating and poignant." -- AudioFile Magazine Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award Fortieth Anniversary Edition This program includes a bonus conversation with the author. A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story...

Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high-school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now.

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone, set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death.

From the author of Housekeeping, Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of America's finest writers.

Chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the top six novels of 2004.

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames' life, he begins a letter to his young son, a kind of last testament to his remarkable forebears.

Auf dem Sterbebett schreibt John Ames einen Brief an seinen siebenjährigen Sohn. Dem Kind will er alles erklären: Die Einsicht, mit der man das eigene Leben auf einen Schlag begreift, den Trost, der in einer einzelnen Berührung liegen kann, und den Ort, der sein Ende beschließt: Gilead, die kleine Stadt unter dem unermesslichen Himmel des Westens, leicht wie Staub und so schwer wie die Welt.

Marilynne Robinson discusses her Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times best-selling second novel, the lyrical, luminous, unforgettable story of minister John Ames, as told poetically in a long letter to his young son. His powerful story spans three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century. This is a book that is being passed hand to hand and that booksellers nationwide are recommending.

Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the loved and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa, a drunkard and a ne'er-do-well. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African American high school teacher, also a preacher's child, with a discriminating mind, a generous spirit and an independent will. Their fraught, beautiful story is one of Robinson's greatest achievements.

Gilead é o segundo romance de uma das mais brilhantes autoras americanas contemporâneas, que compõe com sua escrita um bordado ao mesmo tempo sutil e avassalador — certamente um desafio a uma tradução tão primorosa como essa, de Maria Helena Rouanet. Esse livro é uma declaração de amor incondicional à vida, mesmo assombrada por Deus e um lamento por sua brevidade. Aclamado pela crítica e pelo público, foi o vencedor do Pulitzer de 2005.

Jack Boughton - prodigal son - has been gone 20 years. He returns home seeking refuge and to make peace with the past. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold down a job, Jack is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child.

Marilynne Robinson has built a sterling reputation as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, not only as a major American novelist but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In When I Was a Child I Read Books, she returns to and expands upon the themes that have preoccupied her work with renewed vigor.

With Jack, Robinson takes her listeners back to the small town of Gilead, Iowa, in 1956, to tell the story of John Ames Boughton, the godson of John Ames and the black sheep of his family. He's a ne'er-do-well and the beloved prodigal son who falls in love with and marries Della, a beautiful and brilliant African American teacher he meets in segregated St. Louis. Their fraught, beautiful romance is one of Robinson's greatest achievements.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.

Senza un soldo, senza una casa, Jack passa la notte al Bellefontaine, il cimitero per bianchi di St. Louis. Là nessuno fa caso alla sua giacca sgualcita, al volto emaciato. Ma quella notte Jack non è solo. Una donna gentile cammina per gli stessi viali, una donna che non dovrebbe essere là. Da perfetto gentiluomo, che pure non è, Jack la scorterà fino al mattino cercando di proteggerla da pericoli e malintenzionati.