Gilead

"Gilead" er en roman af Marilynne Robinson, der handler om Paster John Ames, der ønsker at forevige sit liv i et brev til sin søn. Her fortæller han livet. John Ames er blevet far i en meget sen alder, og han ved, at han ikke altid vil være i live til at fortælle sin historie til sin søn. Derfor beslutter han sig for at skrive den ned. Det er både svært, livsbekræftende og rørende. Marilynne Robinson står bag "Gilead"; en varm og stærk kærlighedserklæring.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION and THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK In 1956, towards the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son: 'I told you last night that I might be gone sometime... You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.' 'A visionary work of dazzling originality' ROBERT MCCRUM, OBSERVER 'Writing of this quality, with an authority as unforced as the perfect pitch in music, is rare and carries with it a sense almost of danger' JANE SHILLING, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A beautiful novel: wise, tender and perfectly measured' SARAH WATERS 'A masterpiece' SUNDAY TIMES

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION and THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK In 1956, towards the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son: 'I told you last night that I might be gone sometime... You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.' 'A visionary work of dazzling originality' ROBERT MCCRUM, OBSERVER 'Writing of this quality, with an authority as unforced as the perfect pitch in music, is rare and carries with it a sense almost of danger' JANE SHILLING, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A beautiful novel: wise, tender and perfectly measured' SARAH WATERS 'A masterpiece' SUNDAY TIMES

"Gilead" udkommer nu i en paperback udgave. Fortællingen om en præsts bekendelser i en lille by i 1950ernes Iowa, giver et varmt perspektiv på glæderne ved et religiøst liv. John Ames er blevet far meget sent i sit liv. I 1956, sætter han sig for, at skrive et brev til sin søn på syv år. Gennem sin ældre visdom forklarer han, hvordan religionen er del af livet og at den har været det i Ames familien i generationer. "Gilead" er skrevet af Marilynne Robinson og er blevet varmt anbefalet af USAs tidligere præsident, Barack Obama.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by Marilynne Robinson, one of our finest writers--a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part. In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He preached men into the Civil War, then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son. This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.