Merton: A Biography
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few spiritual figures of the twentieth century have captured the imagination of believers and sceptics alike quite like Thomas Merton — the Trappist monk, poet, and social critic whose restless intellect and passionate faith made him one of the most compelling voices of his era. Monica Furlong's acclaimed biography chronicles the remarkable arc of Merton's life, from his bohemian, rootless childhood across Europe and America to his dramatic conversion to Catholicism and eventual entry into the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, tracing how a young man of the world became one of its most eloquent renouncers. Furlong presents Merton not as a plaster saint but as a deeply human figure — contradictory, brilliantly gifted, and perpetually searching — whose autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain ignited a spiritual awakening in post-war readers and whose later writings on contemplation, civil rights, and nuclear war cemented his status as a prophetic voice. Written with both scholarly rigour and biographical warmth, Furlong's portrait illuminates the tensions at the heart of Merton's vocation: between solitude and engagement, between the cloister and the world. For anyone who has ever wrestled with questions of faith, identity, and the examined life, this biography poses the most tantalising question of all — can a man truly find freedom by choosing to be bound?
Author: Monica Furlong
Format: Paperback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few spiritual figures of the twentieth century have captured the imagination of believers and sceptics alike quite like Thomas Merton — the Trappist monk, poet, and social critic whose restless intellect and passionate faith made him one of the most compelling voices of his era. Monica Furlong's acclaimed biography chronicles the remarkable arc of Merton's life, from his bohemian, rootless childhood across Europe and America to his dramatic conversion to Catholicism and eventual entry into the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, tracing how a young man of the world became one of its most eloquent renouncers. Furlong presents Merton not as a plaster saint but as a deeply human figure — contradictory, brilliantly gifted, and perpetually searching — whose autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain ignited a spiritual awakening in post-war readers and whose later writings on contemplation, civil rights, and nuclear war cemented his status as a prophetic voice. Written with both scholarly rigour and biographical warmth, Furlong's portrait illuminates the tensions at the heart of Merton's vocation: between solitude and engagement, between the cloister and the world. For anyone who has ever wrestled with questions of faith, identity, and the examined life, this biography poses the most tantalising question of all — can a man truly find freedom by choosing to be bound?