The Spiral Staircase - Tapa dura

‘The book deserves many readers... Karen Armstrong must be a Woman of Iron to have survived, made a career and a life.' Hilary Mantel

Praise for The Battle for God:
‘The quality of this remarkable book lies as much in its detail as in its sweeping vision’
Daily Telegraph

‘Armstrong displays all her usual talents: she has an eye for colourful evidence, a wonderful gift for clarity of exposition and an unerring sense of pace and voice and narrative.’
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Literary Review

Praise for The History for God:
‘Only those who think they know it all will fail to be fascinated by Armstrong's search for God.' The Economist

'Highly readable and ought to be read....Karen Armstong has read widely, has missed nothing, and gives us as solid a purview of the God of the past as it would be possible to find in a book,' Anthony Burgess, Observer

'Karen Armstrong is a genius.' A. N. Wilson

A raw, intensely personal memoir of spiritual exploration from one of the world’s great commentators on religion.

After seven years in a convent, which she left, dismayed by its restrictions, an experience recounted in Through the Narrow Gate, Karen Armstrong struggled to establish herself in a new way of life, and became entrapped in a downwards spiral, haunted by despair, anorexia and suicidal feelings.

Despite her departure from the convent she remained within the Catholic Church until the God she believed in 'died on me', and she entered a 'wild and Godless period of crazy parties and numerous lovers'. Her attempts to reach happiness and carve out a career failed repeatedly, in spectacular fashion. She began writing her bestseller A History of God in a spirit of scepticism, but through studying other religious traditions she found a very different kind of faith which drew from Christianity, Judaism and Islam and, eventually, spiritual and personal calm.

In her own words, her 'story is a graphic illustration – almost an allegory – of a widespread dilemma. It is emblematic of a more general flight from institutional religion and a groping towards a form of faith that has not yet been fully articulated but which is nevertheless in the process of declaring itself.' Her lifelong inability to pray and to conform to traditional structures of worship is shared by the many who are leaving the established churches but who desire intensely a spiritual aspect to their lives.

The Spiral Staircase grapples with the issue of how we can be religious in the contemporary world, and the place and possibility of belief in the twenty-first century.