Description
Book Synopsis
A major new interpretation of how one of the great figures of Christian history came to write the greatest of all autobiographies
Augustine is the person from the ancient world about whom we know most. He is the author of an intimate masterpiece, the Confessions, which continues to delight its many admirers. In it he writes about his infancy and his schooling in the classics in late Roman North Africa, his remarkable mother, his sexual sins (''Give me chastity, but not yet,'' he famously prayed), his time in an outlawed heretical sect, his worldly career and friendships and his gradual return to God. His account of his own eventual conversion is a classic study of anguish, hesitation and what he believes to be God''s intervention. It has inspired philosophers, Christian thinkers and monastic followers, but it still leaves readers wondering why exactly Augustine chose to compose a work like none before it.
Robin Lane Fox follows Augustine on a brilliantly
Trade Review
Fifty years ago we learned how much more there was to say when Peter Brown published his magnificent life,
Augustine of Hippo ... [Lane Fox] has now done Brown one better ... Brown managed to tell the whole story, from birth to death, with great economy and flair. Fox aims for full immersion, and he conjures the intellectual and social life of the late Roman empire with an almost Proustian relish for detail. -- Mark Lilla * New York Times Book Review *
Undoubtedly a watershed in Augustinian studies ... the magisterial and compellingly readable narrative ... makes full and creative use of all the best recent scholarship. -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman *
