The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe [Paperback]

"'Colm Toibin writes beautifully in a spare style that allows for plain description, high humour and effects that are carefully toned. He is at once an honest uncertain pilgrim with a press card and a sense of devitment, and a son on an Oedipal trail' Sean Dunne, Irish Times"

Part travelogue, part autobiography, part historical document, this is Colm Tóibín at his finest and most insightful.

Between 1990 and 1994, Colm Tóibín made a series of trips through Catholic Europe. His journey led him into close contact with people from all walks of life, from priests to politicians, from the intellectually open to the spiritually bigoted. He then set down his impressions in this beautifully written book, filled with personal detail set within its historical context. ‘Colm Tóibín writes beautifully in a spare style that allows for plain description, high humour and effects that are carefully toned. He is at once an honest, uncertain pilgrim with a press card and a sense of devilment, and a son on an Oedipal trail’ Irish Times ‘A mixture of autobiography, travelogue and journalism which tantalizes the reader with what it withholds as much as it entertains and instructs with what it describes . . . The Sign of the Cross, like all good writing, is a treat’ Independent on Sunday ‘This book describing Colm Tóibín’s journey is written with the novelist’s familiar clarity and wisdom. It is as much a record of the European Catholic psyche in different political climates as it is an introspective pilgrimage to see what stuff Tóibín’s own faith is made of’ Daily Telegraph

Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of five novels, most recently The Master which was shorlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona and The Sign of the Cross. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. He lives in Dublin.