The Spiral Staircase
My Climb Out of Darkness
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
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; The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism; and Islam: A Short History.
In 1969, after seven years as a Roman Catholic nun -- hoping, but ultimately failing, to find God -- Armstrong left her convent. She knew almost nothing of the changed world she was entering, and she was tormented by panic attacks and inexplicable seizures. Her struggle against despair was fueled by a string of discouragements -- failed spirituality, doctorate and jobs, fruitless dealings with psychiatrists -- but finally, in 1976, she was diagnosed with epilepsy and given proper treatment. She then began the writing career that would become her true calling, and as she focused on the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, her own true inner story began to emerge. She would come to experience brief moments of transcendence through her work -- the profound fulfillment that she had not found in the long hours of prayer as a young nun.
Powerfully engaging, often heart-breaking, but lit with bursts of humour, The Spiral Staircase is an extraordinary history of self.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1969, British writer Armstrong (The Battle for God, etc.) entered a Roman Catholic convent, smitten by the desire to"find God." She was 17 years old at the time--too young, she recognizes now, to have made such a momentous decision. Armstrong's 1981 memoir Through the Narrow Gate described her frustrating, lonely experience of cloistered life and her decision, at 24, to renounce her vows. In its sequel, Beginning the World (1983), she tried to explain her readjustment to the secular world--and failed."It is the worst book I have ever written," she declares in the preface to this new volume:"it was far too soon to write about those years";"it was not a truthful account";"I was...told to present myself in as positive and lively a light as possible." The true story, which she relates in this second sequel, was far more conflicted and intellectually vibrant. Her departure from the convent, she writes, actually made her quite sad; she was"constantly wracked by a very great regret" and suffering on top of it with the symptoms of undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy. How she emerged from such darkness to make a career as a writer whose books honor spiritual concerns while maintaining intellectual freedom and rigor--this is Armstrong's real concern, and the one that will be of most interest to the fans of her many acclaimed works.
