A Book of Silence [Hardcover]

'A Book of Silence grapples with ideas at the very heart of what it is to be human' -- The Times

'Her artful book ... demands to be taken on its own terms' --Independent

'Unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find'

'A brave, honest, fascinating book'

'Offering at once personal anecdotes, cultural diagnoses and soothing antidotes, these memoirs make for a timely and nourishing read'

`Maitland is a bold adventurer ... we are lucky she can give the condition of silence such an articulate voice'

'Described with fervour and intelligence that make this book full of insights and explorations about the natural world'

`Both an analytical, theoretical fascination and a personal one, her reading and her experience locked together, each illuminating the other'

After a noisy upbringing as one of six children, and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland began to crave silence. Over the past five years, she has spent periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Australian bush, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Her memoir of these experiences is interwoven with the history of silence through fairy-tale and myth, Western and Eastern religious traditions, the Enlightenment and psychoanalysis, up to the ambivalence towards silence in contemporary society. Maitland has built a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home. "A Book of Silence" is a deeply thoughtful, honest and illuminating memoir about a phenomenon too often neglected in the contemporary world.

Sara Maitland is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the Somerset Maugham Award-winning Daughters of Jerusalem, and several non-fiction books about religion. Born in 1950, she studied at Oxford University and currently tutors on the Distance Learning MA in creative writing for Lancaster University. She lives in Galloway.