AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS: A Biography

'Punchy, clear, well-argued, and beautifully translated, both linguistically and culturally.' - Peter Brown, Princeton University. Sensitive and informed, this is an appreciation of and introduction to the Confessions, doing justice both to the appealing narrative of sin and fall that preoccupies most readers, and to the more complicated structure and ending of the whole work. Garry Wills tells the story of what motivated Augustine to dictate it, how it asks to be read, and the many ways it has been misread in the one and a half millennia since it was composed. This is an unparalleled introduction to one of the most important books in the Christian and Western traditions. Understandably fascinated by the story of Augustine's life, modern readers have largely succumbed to the temptation to read it as autobiography but this Wills argues this is a mistake. He argues it is rather a long prayer, suffused with the language of Scripture and addressed to God, not man. Augustine tells the story of his life not for its own significance, but in order to discern how, as a drama of sin and salvation leading to God, it fits into sacred society. 'We have to read Augustine as we do Dante, alert to rich layer upon layer of Scriptural and theological symbolisms.' Wills also addresses the long afterlife of the book, from controversy in its own time and relative neglect during the Middle Ages, to a renewed prominence beginning in the 14th century and persisting to today. Confessions has become an object of interest not just for Christians, but also historians, philosophers, psychiatrists and literary critics. It is a spiritual classic. 166 roughcut pages, highly desirable in the USA from where we have imported this Princeton University Press publication.