What are We Doing Here?

New essays by the Orange and Pulitzer Prize winning author of GILEAD, HOME and LILA. In this collection, Marilynne Robinson, one of today's most important thinkers - admired by President Obama, and so many others - impels us to action and offers us hope.

Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including LILA, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; HOME, winner of the Orange Prize; and GILEAD, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? is a call to continue the tradition of the great thinkers and to remake political and cultural life as "deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theatre of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still."

In our era of rampant political and cultural pessimism, we run the risk of becoming bogged down in disillusionment and of losing sight of ways out of the mire. In WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?, the incomparable Marilynne Robinson offers us balm: impelling us to action, but offering us hope.

“Robinson urges her audience to stand by what makes us human - "creative, knowing, efficacious, deeply capable of loyalty". The argument is sophisticated and persuasive”

Grace and intelligence . . . [her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human

- Guardian

A bracing, stringent book that continually challenges the reader - Telegraph

Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack, a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Robinson's non-fiction books include The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country. She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for 'her grace and intelligence in writing.' Robinson lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

New essays by the Orange and Pulitzer Prize winning author of GILEAD, HOME and LILA. In this collection, Marilynne Robinson, one of today's most important thinkers - admired by President Obama, and so many others - impels us to action and offers us hope. Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including LILA , winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; HOME , winner of the Orange Prize; and GILEAD , winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? is a call to continue the tradition of the great thinkers and to remake political and cultural life as "deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theatre of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still." In our era of rampant political and cultural pessimism, we run the risk of becoming bogged down in disillusionment and of losing sight of ways out of the mire. In WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? , the incomparable Marilynne Robinson offers us balm: impelling us to action, but offering us hope.

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