An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order

Description

In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster, the largest center of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians. This is the story of their five-year journey into a society virtually unchanged in its behavior and lifestyle since its founding in 1084. An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now. After five years each man must face a choice: if they stay to make solemn profession they will never leave. But if they leave, they will be turning their backs on a journey to find God in solitude-their lifes ambition. A remarkable investigative work, the book combines first-hand testimony with unique source material to describe the Carthusian life. And in the final chapter, describing a reunion forty years after the events described elsewhere in the book, Nancy Klein Maguire reveals which of the five made it to the top of the mountain.

Nancy Klein Maguire is the author of numerous publications on the relationship of theatre and politics in the seventeenth century. She frequently reviews books, most recently for the Los Angeles Times Book Review. She has been a Scholar-in- Residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, since 1983.

"Maguire has produced a vivid, gripping and deeply touching picture of a world that is now lost. For an outsider to enter such a closed society and to capture its essence is an astonishing achievement: this is a work of history, but it has all the best qualities of a psychological novel." Diarmiud MacCullogh "It is fascinating to enter, if only for a few hours, into this way of life, where extreme devotion forms at last a bit of a bulwark against humanity's digressions." Los Angeles Times"