"For generations, the Book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various hands expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative. In other words, academic interpretation of Genesis has centered on the question of its basic coherency, just as fundamentalist interpretation has centered on the question of the appropriateness of reading it as literally true. Both of these approaches preclude an appreciation of its greatness as literature, its rich articulation and exploration of themes that resonate through the whole of Scripture. Marilynne Robinson's new book is a powerful consideration of the profound meanings and promise of God's enduring covenant with man. Her magisterial book radiates gratitude for the constancy and benevolence of God's abiding faith in Creation"--Publisher's description.
Marilynne Robinson Book order







- 2024
- 2020
Jack
- 320 pages
- 12 hours of reading
Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the beloved and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa, a drunkard and a ne'er-do-well. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African-American high school teacher, also a preacher's child, with a discriminating mind, a generous spirit, and an independent will. Their fraught, beautiful story is one of Robinson's greatest achievements.
- 2020
Housekeeping (Fortieth Anniversary Edition)
- 240 pages
- 9 hours of reading
Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.
- 2020
Gilead (Oprah's Book Club)
- 256 pages
- 9 hours of reading
As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets
- 2020
Home (Oprah's Book Club)
- 336 pages
- 12 hours of reading
"Home" by Marilynne Robinson is a poignant retelling of the prodigal son parable, set in the same Iowa town as her acclaimed novel "Gilead." It explores the complex dynamics of family, secrets, and faith through the story of Jack Boughton, an alcoholic returning home, and his reconnection with his father and sister Glory.
- 2018
What are We Doing Here?
- 336 pages
- 12 hours of reading
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.
- 2018
WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE
- 333 pages
- 12 hours of reading
New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes, by the Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, 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 for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.”
- 2015
Housekeeping. Haus ohne Halt, englische Ausgabe
- 224 pages
- 8 hours of reading
Experience the wonder of the written word from some of the greatest writers of the modern age, with Faber Modern Classics. Housekeeping was chosen by Barbara Kingsolver for inclusion in our Modern Classics.
- 2015
The Givenness of Things
- 336 pages
- 12 hours of reading
The Givenness of Things is Robinson unadorned, speaking her mind forthrightly, sometimes with frustration, often with dry humour . . . Robinson makes full use of her writerly imagination Herald
- 2014