A Book Of Silence

A deeply thoughtful, honest and illuminating memoir about a phenomenon too often neglected in the contemporary world.

"Do you have a favorite sound?" little Yoshio asks. The musician answers, "The most beautiful sound is the sound of ma, of silence." But Yoshio lives in Tokyo, Japan: a giant, noisy, busy city. He hears shoes squishing through puddles, trains whooshing, cars beeping, and families laughing. Tokyo is like a symphony hall! Where is silence? Join Yoshio on his journey through the hustle and bustle of the city to find the most beautiful sound of all.

Now with a new afterword by Pope emeritus Benedict XVI! In a time when technology penetrates our lives in so many ways and materialism exerts such a powerful influence over us, Cardinal Robert Sarah presents a bold book about the strength of silence. The modern world generates so much noise, he says, that seeking moments of silence has become both harder and more necessary than ever before. Silence is the indispensable doorway to the divine, explains the cardinal in this profound conversation with Nicolas Diat. Within the hushed and hallowed walls of the La Grande Chartreux, the famous Carthusian monastery in the French Alps, Cardinal Sarah addresses the following questions: Can those who do not know silence ever attain truth, beauty, or love? Do not wisdom, artistic vision, and devotion spring from silence, where the voice of God is heard in the depths of the human heart? After the international success of God or Nothing, Cardinal Sarah seeks to restore to silence its place of honor and importance. "Silence is more important than any other human work," he says, "for it expresses God. The true revolution comes from silence; it leads us toward God and others so as to place ourselves humbly and generously at their service."

Garth had given the mighty Sword of Bheleu into the Forgotten King's keeping. Now he needed it back, and the King demanded that Garth bring him the Book of Silence in exchange -- but Garth feared that the King would use the Book to bring about an Age of Death.

After a noisy upbringing, Maitland found herself living alone in the country and, to her surprise, falling in love with silence. She describes how she set out to explore this new love, spending periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Scottish hills, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye.

This account of British life in the wake of World War I is “social history at its very best . . . insightful and utterly absorbing” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). As the euphoria of Armistice Day in 1918 quickly subsided, there was no denying the carnage that the Great War had left in its wake. Grief and shock overwhelmed the psyche of the British people—but from their despair, new life would slowly emerge. For veterans with faces demolished in the trenches, surgeon Harold Gillies brings hope with his miraculous skin-grafting procedure. Women win the vote, skirt hems leap, and Brits forget their troubles at packed dance halls. And two years later, the remains of a nameless combatant would be laid to rest in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Westminster Abbey, as “The Great Silence,” observed in memory of the countless dead, halted citizens in silent reverence. This history of two transformative years in the life of a nation features countless characters, from an aging butler to a pair of newlyweds, from the Prince of Wales to T. E. Lawrence, the real-life Lawrence of Arabia. The Great Silence depicts a nation fighting the forces that threaten to tear it apart and discovering the common bonds that hold it together. “A pearl of anecdotal history, The Great Silence is a satisfying companion to major studies of World War I and its aftermath . . . as Nicolson proceeds through the familiar stages of grief—denial, anger and acceptance—she gives you a deeper understanding of not only this brief period, but also how war’s sacrifices don’t end after the fighting stops.” —The Seattle Times “It may make you cry.” —The Boston Globe

On a remote mission station a monk buries the heart of his Superior beneath the great iron cross overlooking the no-man’s-land between the colonies of Natal and the Cape. He then begins to write his own account of his dead leader and friend Abbott Franz Pfanner, charismatic leader of the Trappists in South Africa and much mythologised founder of Mariannhill monastery and its chain of missions. Under Pfanner, Mariannhill became one of the largest abbeys in the world, but only at a terrible price. The narrator of this extraordinary tale is witness to a story that ranges from Austria to Bosnia, Natal to East Griqualand. Aptly named after Joseph of Cupertino, the Holy Fool and Gaper, his attempt at proclaiming the sins of others and confessing his own draws the reader into a vivid sense both of the silent life of the Trappists and the storm that breaks as Mariannhill drifts into the world of words. Here faith, contemplation and grace become intimately intermingled with demonic possession, madness, even murder.

"Bold, musical, lively and highly alluring, Two Kinds of Silence invokes not only the splendour of the Tasmanian coastline and high country, but also the fire and reach of imagination, the poignancy of parenthood, and the overwhelming force and consequence of adult love. Kathryn Lomer's poems prove her to be richly inspired."--BOOK JACKET.