'Robinson's chief love and guiding question is humanity . . . The reason she can go on and on answering this question, and the reason it is worth reading every word, is that the answer is elusive - this "great mystery of being" is, for her, a source of childlike wonder and no other writer in English can write wonder like she can'
Sophie Elmhirst, New Statesman
Marilynne Robinson, internationally acclaimed author of Housekeeping, Gilead and Home, is not only a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, but also a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In this luminous new collection, she returns to the themes that are central to her bestselling novels: the place literature has in life, the role of faith, the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed, eloquent and profoundly insightful, with these essays Robinson demonstrates once again why she is one of our best-loved writers.
'Like Wollstonecraft, Robinson's intellect is threatening. And if it can threaten us into action, is all the greater for that'
Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday
'Rich, uncompromising essays . . . their rewards should be for anyone, of any faith'
Emily Stokes, Financial Times
'Robinson flexes her considerable academic muscle . . . In a world that too often dumbs down, Robinson is to be celebrated for her rigorous erudition'
Helen Davies, Sunday Times

Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack, a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Robinson's non-fiction books include The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country. She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for 'her grace and intelligence in writing.' Robinson lives in Iowa City, Iowa.